buttercream

You can drizzle over cakes or ice creams, whip into a buttercream base to create a ruby-toned frosting for cupcakes, use as a base in a rich pan sauce for roasted chicken, enjoy in an upside-down cake, whisk into a tart, pungent salad dressing — the list goes on and on.

These are best served at room temperature, where the buttercream is soft and lush.

Her food prep and craft-making inspire greeting card musings, as in a scene when she and a friend layer a cake with raspberry preserves and buttercream but leave it unfrosted on the sides.

The cookie featured layers of triple-berry jam and light vanilla buttercream sandwiched in between two chilled, purple-hued, vanilla cookies and rolled in star-studded sprinkles.

While some people today might enjoy a Yule Log made from sponge cake and buttercream, the modern-day dessert is derived from a largely faded tradition of burning a huge, specially selected log of wood in a hearth to mark the winter solstice and symbolize the twigs the shepherds used to keep Jesus warm.