Becky is the frosting guru around these parts, and I LOVE the chocolate frosting she made for Breezy’s Chocolate Chocolate Birthday Cake. It’s light, it’s fluffy, and it’s not overly sweet. It’s really perfection, if you ask me. And the first time I made it—almost exactly a year ago—I decided to get fancy and pipe frosting onto cupcakes for my daughter’s birthday, thinking my kids would be all impressed with my (virtually non-existent) decorating skills.
“They look like poop emojis!” my two youngest crowed in delight. Somewhat deflated, I realized they weren’t wrong. They DID look like poop emojis.
Fast forward a year, and said daughter requested a half vanilla, half chocolate birthday cake—one layer of chocolate cake, one layer of vanilla cake, and then both chocolate and vanilla frostings. Since she was hosting a sleepover a few days after her birthday, I decided we’d use the extra cake batter and frosting for cupcakes.
Ever since those accidental poop emoji cupcakes, she’d been begging me for cake decorating eyeballs* and mustaches* so she could make purposeful poop emoji cupcakes. Since I’m not a fan of chemical colorings, I kept putting her off, but the day before her birthday, I popped them both into my cart at the grocery store as a birthday gift.
She was THRILLED. And she couldn’t wait to make the cupcakes for her sleepover.
While I’d thought about using the Breezy frosting, it was a little more work than I wanted to do. Plus, I’d come across a simple, fabulous, not-too-sweet chocolate frosting when I’d found the Perfect Vanilla Cake recipe. And simple was speaking to me in the middle of a super busy week.
This frosting whips up light, silky, and smooth. It literally melts in your mouth and has a taste reminiscent of chocolate fudge (but not as sweet) that is the perfect complement to vanilla cake. But it doesn’t stay light and fluffy. It firms up and will hold whatever shape you spread or pipe it in.
I hadn’t really thought about that (or remembered it) from when I’d used it in January, so I stored the leftovers in the fridge, planning to pipe it onto cupcakes a few days later.
No go. While it does keep well in the fridge, you can’t soften it up again to be able to spread or pipe it (unless maybe you heat it? I didn’t try that, but I might have to give it a try next time just to see). I tried throwing it back in the mixer and softening with a little extra milk, but only succeeded in ruining it.
So I made a fresh batch for the cupcakes.
And the frosted cupcakes—and the sleepover—were a hit.
Ingredients
- 6 oz semisweet or dark chocolate
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 Tablespoons cocoa
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 Tablespoons heavy cream or milk
Instructions
- Melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a double boiler. Let cool until it feels just barely warm.
- Beat butter until light and creamy. Drizzle in cooled melted chocolate and beat well. Add powdered sugar, cocoa, and salt and mix until well combined. Spoon in vanilla and cream/milk, and beat on high for about 30 seconds.
- Spread or pipe onto cooled cake or cupcakes, and enjoy!
Notes
*The eyeballs and mustaches are Amazon affiliate links. (Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.) Thanks! Please see the right sidebar for more info.