My Favorite Decorating Icing

I recently started working on my cake decorating again, just for fun, after The Princess wanted a flower covered birthday cake. Boy was I out of practice! I tried several icing recipes, but I hit gold when I made my own little changes to one of Wilton's buttercreams.

Here's what I used:

• 1/2 C Crisco shortening
• 1/2 C (1 stick) real butter, unsalted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp Watkin's butter-flavored extract
• about 4 C powdered sugar, a little more on hand if you'd like some icing stiffer.
• 2 Tbs half & half, a tiny bit on hand if you'd like to thin some icing for spreading. 

I separated the generous amount (about 3 cups) into small cups for coloring, keeping much of it for icing the cake. I thinned the spreading icing with a few more drops of half & half. I also added a tiny spoon of powdered sugar to the frosting used for the roses. I affixed wax paper squares to my flower nail with a dab of frosting, to quickly form tons of roses while letting them all dry before placing on the cake. Just carefully pull off and put on a new square and go again. (This was SUPER helpful when practicing!)

This Tinker Bell cake was MUCH more feminine than The Jedi's Hobbit Hole cake!