Ingredients for 12 cupcakes:

• 4 oz. butter, preferably unsalted
• 10 oz. icing sugar

Method:

Take the butter out of the fridge, put it in a bowl and let it melt at room temperature until it becomes soft. Then cream the butter by steering it with a wooden spoon. This should take you about 5 minutes. In a separate bowl, sift the icing sugar, then start adding it to the cream butter, one spoon at a time, mixing continuously. It’s strongly advisable to sift the icing sugar, not necessarily because of the impurities it may contain, but because it usually forms lumps which would be very difficult to get rid of, once you mix the sugar in the butter cream. Sifting will help you obtain a fine buttercream icing for your cupcakes. Another useful tip for the perfect homemade buttercream: don’t mix it too much, especially if you decide to use a kitchen mixer instead of the wooden spoon, because it would lead to air bubbles formation inside the mixture. These bubbles are a real pain and they would spoil the effect of your cupcakes icing.

Optionally, you can add a few drops of food coloring and flavors such as vanilla extract or almond extract. Colored extracts would change the color of the frosting, so you need to buy clear extracts if you want to prevent that. Please be aware that the color of this buttercream icing is not pure white, because the butter itself is not white. If you need a perfectly white frosting, then you should replace the butter with shortening, but that’s already another cupcake icing recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound cream cheese
• 1/2 pound whipped cream
• 1/4 pound white chocolate
• Food coloring (optional, if you don’t want the frosting to be white)

These quantities should be enough for at least one dozen cupcakes, but if you spread it thin, it can be enough for two dozens. It usually depends on how thick you like the frosting to be, so what works for me may not be the same for you. Anyway, after you try the homemade frosting once, you’ll know how many cupcakes you can decorate with such and such quantities.

Method:

In a bowl, mix the cream cheese with the whipped cream. Melt the white chocolate (steaming is my favorite method). Add the melted chocolate to the mix, blend everything well and you’re done. The cream cheese frosting goes very well with fresh fruit and gelatin toppings, for creating refreshing and original cupcake recipes.