Vanilla Bean Buttercream

I have been looking for a vanilla frosting recipe for cupcakes that would make a pretty swirl. I recently made some strawberry cupcakes with a strawberry buttercream frosting. No matter how much powdered sugar I added to the frosting it was just too liquid-y. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious, but it melted right off the cupcakes. I only frosted a few of the cakes before I stopped and set out to find a stiffer buttercream. I went back to The Cupcake Project and tried out her 'favorite vanilla buttercream.' It is now MY favorite vanilla buttercream.

The only adaptation I made is to use the scraped seeds from two vanilla pods instead of the 2 tsp. of vanilla bean paste. (only because that's what I had on hand)

It was fantastic on the strawberry cupcakes. I've also used it on homemade oreos (will blog soon, I have to make them again because I didn't get pictures the first time), Sugar Cookie Bars (again, need to blog this one), and most recently, oatmeal cookie sandwiches.

For the Oatmeal Cookie Sandwiches I used my usual recipe and baked the cookies for 12 minutes in my new fancy Whoopie Pie Pan. Once cooled, I filled with the vanilla bean butter cream. These sandwiches were so amazing, I kept one and immediately got rid of the rest because I knew I would have devoured them all.

Vanilla Bean Buttercream Frosting

From: The Cupcake Project

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup butter (room temperature)

2 tsp vanilla bean paste

1 tbsp milk

Directions:

Mix butter and sugar til well combined. Add in vanilla and milk. Add more sugar to make the frosting stiffer, or milk to make it less stiff.