Strawberry Buttercream

As I stood at my kitchen island last night, furiously whirring mixer in one hand and a cloud of powdered sugar in my face, I was transported to a moment nearly two years ago. Imagine a younger and starry eyed Laura, mere hours from her wedding, standing at a counter, hand mixer whirring in one hand, gagging on a cloud of powdered sugar. She watches as the bowl of pink goop refuses to be anything close to the wedding cupcake frosting of her dreams. With a scant two hours until her wedding rehearsal the pink begins to look redder and redder until our blushing bride throws down the mixer, picks up her car keys, drives to the store and buys 8 cans of spray frosting.

I've survived two years of wedded bliss to Mr. Onion, but I still can't make this recipe anything but horrible! The first batch I frosted looked like this:

I won't tell you what this looks like to me. 

The very sight of the strawberry liquid separated from the cream and the looked like some kind of crystalized, curdle. Not pretty, but not terrible tasting although the consistency was all wrong and the flavor was too sugary and not enough strawberryness.  In my head the perfect strawberry frosting is fresh and light and just the slightest bit sweet. 

So I tried adding more powdered sugar, thinking if nothing else it would help with some of the unfortunate texture and consistency issues. This is what I got:

Better, but not by much. This frosting was still too soft (even after a night in the fridge) and too sugary for my taste. Seriously, my tongue hurts today from all the sugar. 

So what did I do with them? Fed them to other people's children of course! You know what? The kids raved about them. They moaned, they licked the sloppy pinkness from arms and fingers, they made me promise not to change a thing (I crossed my fingers). I'm glad they enjoyed them and that they carried their sugar fueled little selves to someone else's home tonight. 

The recipe I followed is from myrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened 
• 2 (16-ounce) packages powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 cup finely chopped fresh strawberries 
• Preparation
• Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer 20 seconds or until fluffy. Add powdered sugar and chopped strawberries, beating at low speed until creamy. (Add more sugar if frosting is too thin, or add strawberries if too thick.)