Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

How have I gotten this far without posting a recipe for buttercream frosting? I mean, if the dessert will hold still long enough I slather it with the stuff. The truth? I never really measure when I make frosting. I just taste until it tastes right. Or until Lito (my husband/guinea pig) tells me that it tastes right. I have some rough measurements for you, but the trick to making the best frosting ever is to taste & adjust until it's just right. (Someone please make a Goldilocks joke.)

Okay. Dreamy Buttercream Frosting

Here's What You Need:

1 stick of room temp butter. MUST. BE. SOFTENED. ENTIRELY.
3-ish cups of powdered sugar.
1 Tablespoon vanilla (I use Trader Joe's Bourbon Vanilla when I can't get my hands on real mexican vanilla)
4-ish Tablespoons of milk, half-n-half, heavy cream, whatever's in the fridge. The higher fat content, the yummier, right? Right.

Here's What You Do:

1. Cream the butter in a medium bowl (medium-high speed).
2. Add the vanilla. YUM.
3. Add the powdered sugar and milk in alternating batches. Start with about a cup of powdered sugar, mix it in, then maybe a tablespoon of milk, mix it in. See where you are. If your mixer is going to sieze if you put in any more powdered sugar because the stuff is too dry, add more milk before going on to the next round of milk/pwd sugar.
4. Taste it. Adjust powdered sugar and milk until you have the desired consistency. For piping (above) I like the frosting to be able to "stand up" when I dip a spoon in and create a little peak. Make sense? Message me if you want more muddled instructions.

You can add flavors/extracts to switch up this basic recipe too -- I've had success adding almond, maple, and lemon. Anyone else tried something awesome?

Enjoy!

Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

So while Nicole and I were making the strawberry jam and the biscuits, I mentioned that the jam is also really good on homemade vanilla ice cream as a topping. So we then we had to make vanilla ice cream. We sort of followed our own "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" gustatory logic for the whole evening. It was delicious. We opted to try a new recipe we found online, and decided to add vanilla bean, since I had some on hand. Here's what we ended up with. If you have an ice cream maker in your cabinet somewhere, you should pull it out and give this recipe a try.

Vanilla Ice Cream

Here's What You Need
4 Cups of Half & Half
1 Can of Sweetened Condensed Milk
2 Tablespoons of Vanilla
1/2 Vanilla Bean, seeds scraped out (optional)

Here's What You Do
1. Mix Sweetened Condensed Milk and Half & Half. Mix in Vanilla. If you're adding the scraped out vanilla bean, do that too.
2. Pour into your ice cream maker (I have this one with a cold bowl)
3. Turn on.
4. Enjoy with homemade strawberry jam or the toppings of your dreams.