Here I sit in Kansas City, Missouri, well after the events I described in my last post: the post-concert reception and the dinner for the annual business meeting. So I’ll give you a quick update and then a great, simple frosting recipe that you can use in the place of that horrible powdered-sugar stuff. I’ll be doing an exhaustive (and exhausting) recipe and variations for my streamlined Swiss buttercream, but that will have to wait.
In the meantime, here’s what I did, with some helpful hints along the way:
I nixed the black pepper-Parmesan biscotti and just stuck with the spicy Cheddar cookies.
I nixed the banana cupcakes and just stuck with the pistachio ones, part of them with strawberry buttercream (recipe to come) and part with white chocolate-cream cheese frosting (recipe below).
Sorry about the rather distorted photograph; it was taken in haste via smartphone at the reception itself.
The dinner on Tuesday night, May 14, went really well, but my word! We usually have around 65-70 people, as many are going off on vacation after a busy season. But there were at least 85 there, and they ate like ravening wolves. Everything pretty much disappeared. If I’d known how many were coming I’d have made more, but I guess everyone got at least something. I would say that the biggest lesson, once again, is:
Go ahead and put things together ahead of time.
I seem to have think a recipe that requires chopping and sauteing onions, grating cheese, opening cans, mixing together a sauce, shredding chicken, and layering all this with tortillas will take no time at all. I was frantically throwing together four batches of this in the last hour or so before I needed to leave the house; every batch was a little different. What was really funny was that people kept asking me for the recipe, and I had to say, “Well, I can give it to you, but who knows what you actually ate.” Ah well.
For dessert I used Sally McKinney’s recipe for super-moist carrot cake but left out the nuts and made the recipe as mini cupcakes. I used the following recipe for the frosting. Let me tell you, I don’t plan ever to make regular cream cheese frosting again. It’s fabulous!
White Chocolate-Cream Cheese Frosting
Very easy and so completely delicious that you won't believe it! Adapted from a recipe in the Washington Post that was adapted from a recipe by Rose Levy Beranbaum that was posted over at the King Arthur llour website. (Lots of steps here.) I've upped the ratio of white chocolate to cream cheese and butter (as is only right) and eliminated some fiddly measurements and one ingredient. My version is just poi-fect. Note what I say in the recipe about using unsalted butter. This may be one of the few times when making the effort to buy this ingredient is justified.
Ingredients
- 16 ounces white chocolate chopped, or equivalent amount of white chocolate chips*
- 12 ounces cream cheese, or 1 1/2 8-oz. pkgs., at room temperature
- 6 ounces butter, 12 tablespoons, or 1 1/2 sticks, at room temperature, unsalted preferrd**
- 2 tsp. vanilla
Instructions
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Melt the chocolate by putting it in a microwave-safe container and heating for 2 minutes at 50% power. It will be only partially melted; stir until smooth, heating for an additional 30 seconds at 50% power if needed. Why any recipe ever tells you to microwave chocolate on high is a mystery to me. Let the chocolate cool until cool. Don't neglect this step! You don't want to melt your butter. But don't let it cool so long that it starts solidifying around the edges and you end up with little chunks of chocolate. If that does happen, of course, just re-microwave it at 50% for maybe a minute. And then you may have to re-cool it. So don't let it sit too long in the first place!
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Meanwhile, use your stand mixer with the whisk attachment (preferred) or a hand mixer to whip the softened butter and cream cheese together. Add the vanilla, then gradually mix in the melted white chocolate. Whip until creamy and thick.
Recipe Notes
*You'll read in many recipes that you shouldn't use chocolate chips to replace baking chocolate, but that's simply not true, especially for a frosting recipe when you want a certain amount of stiffness. Just be sure that any chocolate that you use, chips or bars, is made with cocoa butter and not just palm oil or hydrogenated vegetable oil. I've used my local grocery chain's brand, Kroger's Private Selection, with great success.
**Because the cream cheese is salted, I feel that the use of salted butter makes the final product a little too salty. You certainly don't have to do this, and if you're making the frosting and realize that you don't have anything but salted butter, please just go ahead. I think you'll be happier with the end result if you remember to get the unsalted version when you're out grocery shopping. I say this as someone who has always refused to bother with unsalted butter even though pretty much every recipe I have says to use it. I typically cut the amount of salt down in recipes that call for unsalted butter, but for this recipe there's no additional salt for me to cut. Your call!
12 ounces of butter = 3 sticks
Which is the amount needed for the frosting recipe?