My favorite childhood birthday cake was angel food, partly because it was always so light and airy and partly because it didn’t call for frosting. I was never a fan of the frostings that topped typical children’s cakes, which tasted supersweet and set up almost as stiff as pavlova. It wasn’t until I learned to make buttercream that I truly embraced frosted desserts.

As I explain this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon, a good buttercream frosting is both rich and airy. It practically melts on your tongue, without leaving it feeling coated in sugar crystals. It accepts almost any flavor, from classic chocolate or vanilla bean to the unexpected in both color and taste, like the leafy green hue and hints of spiciness and anise imparted by basil.

Learn more about buttercream and get the complete recipe for Basil Buttercream Frosting in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

This week’s Basil Buttercream Frosting can be treated as a master recipe for other flavors. Shaved chocolate works best when folded into the finished buttercream, but I start with Herb-Infused Sugar when making frosting with another herb or edible flower. The sugar absorbs the botanical’s flavorful oils, spreading them more evenly throughout the frosting. You can make the sugar in advance and have it handy for all sorts of uses, or you can grind the herbs into it just before you prepare the frosting.

Here are some of my other favorite buttercream flavors for Buttery Jam-Filled Cupcakes and other cakes. You can find recipes that infuse beverages, sauces, and more with herbs and other flavors in the recipe index.

• Floral: Hearty blooms like lavender do fine with grinding and immediate use, but I prefer to layer delicate ones like lilacs in sugar and let them gently release their oils over a couple of weeks.
• Vanilla or cinnamon: Density matters when flavoring frosting with spices. Tiny vanilla bean seeds and ground cinnamon mix well into the butter, but whole vanilla pods and cinnamon sticks are so hard that infused sugar has a better texture.
• Miso caramel: I start with Homemade Caramel Sauce but stir in a tablespoon of miso instead of salt. The sauce has to be added slowly to the whipped egg whites to keep them smooth and glossy and then whipped again to lower the temperature enough to add the butter without melting it.
• Fruit: Freeze-dried berries act like spices when ground into a powder and used to flavor buttercream. A few tablespoons of jam or jelly also impart fruity flavor and pastel colors. Fresh or frozen fruit is too juicy and would keep the buttercream from setting up properly.

I typically use buttercream as the sole decoration on cupcakes, and this week’s recipe tops 12 standard-sized ones. If you have extra buttercream, store it in the freezer for future decorative highlights, such as atop a layered Chocolate Pudding Cake coated in Ganache (Chocolate Glaze).

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.