Frosting for the cake

I have to make a cake. In the past I’ve taken days to make one from scratch. You know, taking strawberries and blending them and boiling them to make a jam, then using that to make a strawberry cake. However, the third child is getting Betty Crocker. (I’ll still try to make it look fun. Look on Instagram for the picture.) But one thing I absolutely fucking refuse to do is frosting from a can.

Easy Buttercream Frosting.

Butter (like a pound) preferably salted unless you want to add your own salt. See Notes on Things for more on salted vs. unsalted butter.

Powdered Sugar (like a pound).

Vanilla. As I’ve written regarding garlic, add more than is sensible and don’t get the crap imitation stuff.

Blend the butter till it’s soft and fluffy, add vanilla, start adding the sugar until it looks right and tastes good.

It will be brownish if you put in enough vanilla. Add other colors if you like.

Put it on the cake. Decorate with sprinkles. It doesn’t fucking matter what you do with them. I find flooding the top works and it isn’t hard and for a 3-year-old it looks fancy.

We were going to have pizza for dinner tonight because the birthday girl likes it and I didn’t want to cook. Then a storm came through and the pizza place lost power. After an hour of hoping they would still be able to deliver they called and mentioned that our pizzas were in the oven when they lost power and they would refund our price. I just asked them to deliver it the next day, as I still wanted pizza and to not cook.

We had hot dogs instead and since hot dogs involve boiling water, we also had broccoli and my husband felt fancy so then there was also avocado and shredded cheese. Of course my dad wanted sauerkraut and mustard. And now we have a build-your-own hot dog bar! So much for not wanting to cook. I know cooking hot dogs isn’t hard. But for me it isn’t the action so much as the thinking about it that is overwhelming sometimes. And this is coming from someone who loves to cook! But the chopping…holy hell I fucking hate chopping. It may stem from the massive amount I had to do in culinary school. Practicing for hours to get a potato cut into perfect 1-inch (or ¼ inch or ½ inch) cubes has made me less than patient with cutting things up. I also hate preparing fiddly food for the same reason.

I also found out I can abso-fucking-lutely bribe my kids with candy to eat broccoli. So as a good economist I set up a store.  Certain pieces of broccoli were worth certain amounts of candy. Good news for me is that I have no leftover broccoli tonight, for the first time in family history. From now on there will be a broccoli (or whatever I need them to eat)-to-candy ratio in our home. I’m the best mom!

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