Cooked Vanilla and Chocolate Almond Frostings

Chocolate Almond Frosting, So Good You’ll Want To Eat It Straight

I have a confession: I have never been a fan of the always popular buttercream.  I’ve genuinely tried to like it, and have certainly had my share.  I’m not known to turn down a cupcake, and the stock topping is always a combination of butter and powdered sugar.  Most of the time it is cloyingly sweet, and it just doesn’t get me excited.  Let’s be honest, I still gobble it down, but it’s never what I really want.  In my early baking days, a friend bought me The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook.  At the time, the bakery it’s from was all the rage in New York, especially after it was featured in an episode of Sex and the City.  It was before cupcakes became a “thing,” and even before the long forgotten donut craze.  As soon as I got it, I made their traditional vanilla birthday cake (which is great), and then did what was expected and followed their recipe for traditional vanilla buttercream. I was so disappointed. I mean really disappointed. It calls for EIGHT cups of powdered sugar for two sticks of butter! Remember, I was still new to the whole playing in the kitchen thing, so I followed the recipe exactly, not tasting it as I went along. When all was said and done, it looked beautiful, but I felt like eating it would send me straight to the dentist.

Over the years I have searched for a frosting recipe that actually makes me happy.  Some have been better than others, but a few years ago I found the winner on Tasty Kitchen. This recipe looks bizarre though, like nothing I had seen before. It first calls for you to heat milk and flour together on the stove.  FLOUR.  In a frosting. Once that turns thick (the original recipe describes it like a brownie batter), you let it cool and then beat it to death with creamed butter and granulated white sugar.  There is no powdered sugar in this. And the proportion of sugar to butter is a fraction of what you normally find in buttercream recipes.  I’ve always assumed this has to be an old recipe, the kind you would find written on an index card in a box at your grandmother’s. (Certainly not my grandmother’s, but maybe yours.) Clearly priced right, with no heavy cream and a fraction of the sugar (2 cups of sugar to 4 sticks of butter, compared to SIXTEEN cups of powdered sugar to make the same amount of Magnolia Buttercream!), I figured that the flour had to be there for a reason.  With a few minutes search, I found one explanation on Chowhound. Because the flour and milk are cooked like a roux, this has been referred to as Gravy Icing, and the poster called Making Sense wrote, “The Gravy Icing was terrific in the hot, humid South. In addition to being economical, especially in the lean Depression and War years, it stood up to the heat and humidity in the days before air-conditioning. Buttercreams slid right off a cake and down onto the tables.” This is a no nonsense frosting. (Or icing if you rather, but frosting is typically fluffy and thick while icing is glossy and thin.)

Vanilla Almond Frosting can become any color you wish

Since I started making this recipe I’ve futzed around to make it my own. I haven’t veered far, but I added almond extract and more often than not, cocoa powder.  We’re a chocolate house, and unless the cake theme requires lighter frosting (yellow robot cake, green Ninjago cake, multicolored Lego brick cake, you get the idea), that’s the way we go. My go-to chocolate cake is the foundation of every celebration, and if I am going to frost it, this is always my best option. This frosting reminds me of pudding, and I just want to eat it straight up with a spoon. It is the perfect filling between cake layers, is smooth, and not too sweet. Just trust that it will all work out, because people have been making it for ages and it stands the test of time.

Use whole milk, and you’ll never even miss the heavy cream

Flour may seem odd in frosting, but once it cooks you never know it’s there

You want your flour and milk to turn thick, just like this

Getting ready to be creamed

Unlike powdered sugar frosting, beat this like crazy to get rid of the graininess

Creamed butter and sugar turn fluffy and yellow

The almond extract gets added to the milk, flour and vanilla combo

Don’t be tempted to try this part, despite how pretty it looks

At this point you have Vanilla Almond Frosting

But if you add cocoa powder you’ll get your chocolate fix

You’ll definitely want to try this part

The Chocolate Almond is the perfect filling between layers

The frosting makes Mickey Mouse a reality and a birthday boy very happy