The Best Icing Ever

Over the last year or two I’ve gotten into baking as a hobby, reasoning that just because I’ll never be a decent cook (WAY too picky and unfocused) doesn’t mean I can’t come up with reasons to buy and wear aprons. 

(A post for another time: I love this whole retro twee thing that’s been going on for the last few years—cupcakes, ukuleles, braided pigtails, dresses, colorful tights—and no, it doesn’t make me a bad feminist.  Basically, if I could be Chuck in Pushing Daisies, I would.  Stay tuned for “In Defense of Cupcake Culture” once the semester is over.) 

Anyway, as much as I love traipsing around the house wearing aprons, I love eating delicious sweet things even more.  The whole process of measuring and chopping and beating and learning chemistry (read The Sweet Life: Desserts from Chanterelle by Kate Zuckerman for a crash course in both exotic fruits and the chemistry of desserts) is almost intoxicating, almost meditative.  There’s something so satisfying, too, in making things from scratch: sifting your own cake flour together out of flour and cornstarch, getting orange hands from grating carrots for carrot cake, burning several batches of caramel before succeeding.

Last night was a dear friend’s birthday, and there’s an inside joke in our little circle that I translate my friends into desserts.  So she, an earthy, practical, gently feminine and genuinely sweet woman, became vanilla cupcakes with lavender honey icing.  I’ve got a go-to vanilla cake recipe that I love, but the icing was new and a tad terrifying; I’ve never used lavender before, but honey is one of my favorite things in the world, so much so that we used it for favors at our wedding.  Here goes:

Lavender Honey Cream Cheese Icing
8 oz softened cream cheese (I prefer the softer texture of American Neufchatel, but that’s purely a personal thing)
1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/3 cup honey
1 tablespoon of dried lavender flowers

Beat the cream cheese and sugar together, then add the honey.  If your electric hand-mixer is crappy like mine, mix the honey in with a wooden spoon.  You’ll need your spoon anyway to add the dried lavender—make sure to fold, not stir, and go easy on the icing during this last step, because crushing the lavender could make it overly soapy.  Then spread it on everything you ever eat again because it’s just that good. 

The end result is such a great, subtle combination of flavors.  Cream cheese icing works so well, of course, because the sweet and just a tad sour, slightly savory cheese tempers the pow-sweetness of the sugar, and the earthy honey grounds and complements the floral notes of the lavender.

I got the recipe from Cupcake Club at Squidoo and adapted it just a bit by using less lavender, since I had never used it before and I knew how easily lavender goes from “Oh, what is that?” to “Ew, soap,” and I was baking for palates that would appreciate a light touch.  It could definitely stand a little more lavender, though, depending on the diner.  The best part, of course, is that I’ve got a pastry bag half full of the stuff still in my fridge, so it looks like I’ll just have to make more cake today in order to use it up—poor me!