I wanted something light enough to let the melting fudge layers to really take center stage. I made this frosting on Christmas Eve to top a sour cream fudge layer cake. The flavor is gently vanilla the texture is feather-light. Essentially, you make a roux of milk and flour, which is just a thick creamy paste, and then whip it with softened butter and granulated sugar until you’ve got a big bowl of fluff on your hands. Really, it’s just the thing to balance an ultra rich chocolate fudge cake.Īnd it’s not difficult to whip up either. Perfectly light and fluffy, and able to make an intense cake somehow delicate and dainty. It’s luxurious and smooth, but only subtly sweet. It’s somewhat of a silky, more substantial whipped cream. That’s what I’m looking for in a frosting.Īnd that’s what I found in this whipped wonder. It’s not a hit of butter, then a gritty tingle of sugar, followed by a vanilla aftertaste. It’s because of it’s unmatched flavor blending, FYI) The beauty of a frosting with high amplitude is that you don’t taste the components of the frosting separately you taste them as one intense mix. (Malcolm Gladwell refers to amplitude in his essay, The Ketchup Conundrum, where he writes about how and why Heinz Ketchup secured the throne in the world of ketchup. And there’s a word for that perfect blending of flavors: ‘amplitude.’ It occurs when all of the various ingredients in something fuse to create a seamless and uniform crescendo of taste. The best frostings must be so well balanced and blended that no one flavor note sticks out in isolation. The texture isn’t silky enough, the flavor isn’t delicate enough, to properly balance a tender, soft-crumbed cake. They’re delicious, don’t get me wrong, but the flavor is often a little heavy on the unsalted butter (you know that straight slick of cream coating your tongue?) or the powdered sugar isn’t as incorporated as it should be, making it slightly gritty.

Even the best buttercreams have a slightly overpowering presence on cupcakes and layer cakes. The slight problem I find with many homemade frostings (versus freshly made bakery versions) is that they’re either too heavy or too sweet. Now, bear with me here because I’m going to talk science and logistics of perfecting that sweet silky cream. Here are the step by step instructions to make the best whipped frosting! It’s a fluffy vanilla frosting with a texture like whipped cream and a less cloying sweetness than most other recipes!Ī good cake has a great frosting to match.

Whipped vanilla frosting recipe