Ermine Frosting (aka Cooked Flour or Cooked Milk frosting)

 

This method and ingredients of this recipe seem bonkers, but I promise you it makes foolproof, delicious icing. Depending on how you tweak the texture, it tastes like a not-too-sweet good bakery buttercream (like Goldilocks) or almost like whipped cream or Twinkie filling. You can also add any flavourings you want, either by steeping them in the milk, or as extracts at the end. 

It's fairly easy, but it's multi-step and needs to be planned ahead of time. You cannot make this last minute. You start by making a cooked milk and flour paste, adding the sugar and letting it cool to a pudding-like substance. Then you beat this into softened butter. There will be moments when it looks like a curdled mess, you just have to push through and it will come together. 

This particular recipe is a mash up of several that I've tried - I use the basic proportions from a NYT recipe, with the method from Serious Eats (which incidentally has an excellent tutorial on how to adjust the texture of any buttercream).

1/4 cup flour, plus 1 Tbsp (between 1/4 and 1/3 cup)

1 cup milk

1 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla

Put flour into a small saucepan and whisk in milk slowly to prevent lumps. Heat on medium, whisking frequently until it starts to thicken, then whisk constantly until mixture is fully thickened and it starts to boil. Take off heat and whisk in sugar and salt until combined and sugar is dissolved. Scrape mixture into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap on the surface of the mixture and let cool to room temperature. If setting aside for more than a few hours, store in fridge and let come up to room temperature when ready to use.

When you're ready to finish the icing, make sure the milk/flour mixture is room temperature. Put the butter into a stand mixer and beat until soft and fluffy. Add in globs of the milk/flour, a couple of tablespoons at a time, mixing well between each addition. Once you've added all the paste and have a homogenous mixture, add the vanilla and other flavourings. 

 

At this point you can tweak the texture. If you want it really fluffy, switch to the whisk attachment and beat on high until very aerated. Or if it's too loose or soupy, chill in the fridge for 10 minutes and re-whip. 

Texture after all the paste/butter has been mixed.

Texture after adding 3 tsp of instant coffee powder and switching to the whisk attachment to aerate.

This icing tastes best at room temperature, but if you can keep in the fridge and just take out to come up to temp when needed. 

*The cover picture for this recipe uses 1 batch of this recipe (with coffee flavour) to fill and lightly frost a 3 layer cake. I filled the layers with the frosting, plus canned dulce de leche caramel sauce, then piped whipped cream rosettes on top and drizzled with more caramel.