U's fourth: the prep

Ulysses's birthday is tomorrow and I wanted to make for a more fun and relaxed weekend by making it a three-day one. I'm puttering around cleaning and cooking stuff for tomorrow. I just made some buttercream frosting. I tasted a little and it had that rough, scratchy quality that mars the taste of frosting. Uh oh.

I was hoping it would go away by tomorrow -- that maybe it was the coarseness of the sugar that hadn't been absorbed into the butter and cream yet.

Then I was looking for decorative icing recipes and I came across this nugget of info in the (old) Joy of Cooking: it said that the cornstarch they put in confectioner's sugar has a raw taste and if you want it go away, heat it over boiling water for a little while. Oops. Too late for that. Now I'm thinking maybe this is just a brand of sugar that has a lot of cornstarch in it and I'm basically screwed. Then I remembered seeing, the other day at the natural food store, a bag of all-natural confectioner's sugar, but it was like four bucks. Do you have to pay four bucks instead of one just to get sugar that's all sugar and not sugar plus? Geez.

Well, I just hope the frosting tastes better by tomorrow. I'm about to make a decorative icing with more confectioner's sugar, cream and veg shortening. And vanilla. I hope it tastes OK. I am not of the school of thought that says it doesn't matter what a birthday cake tastes like, as long as it's there and pretty.

***

Oh, good. I just retasted that frosting and now it tastes good. The vanilla came to the fore instead of the powderyness. So maybe it was just a matter of letting everything get absorbed.

Last year for U's birthday I bought a bunch of frosting tips. I look forward to using them again!