After seeing the beautiful cake beachcakes posted in another thread, I had to go visit http://www.freedsbakery.com/ and see more. Nice!

Anyway, I was looking at their cake, icing, and filling descriptions when I noticed this description for one:
Freeds is famous for our Butter Cream icing. We make a cooked European Butter Cream from Vienna. All of our store cakes and birthday cakes are iced with our Butter Cream icing. The ingredients are butter, margerine, powder sugar and eggs. Because the ingredients are yellow the icing has a yellow cast to it. We can not color our Butter Cream to be white. The flavor is delicious. The icing melts in your mouth with no greasy after taste.

I don't think that I've ever seen a European-style buttercream with powdered sugar and margarine. Does anyone have any ideas about this type of recipe? I've made both IMBC and SMBC, and while I see the appeal, my family doesn't love them. at. all. The ingredients in the Freed's description are... intriguing to me. It seems like it would be sweeter and possibly less buttery than the European-style buttercreams that I've tried. And if it still had the nice smooth melt in your mouth quality....

Sorry so long! Thanks for reading and any ideas!

Hmmm.I'm intrigued too!!! Anyone know!!!

I have no idea, but it sounds interesting!

Found this recipe on allrecipes.com I have never tried it, so I don't know how it would work out.

1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup shortening
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon butter flavored extract
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

DIRECTIONS
Mix heavy cream and flour in a small bowl. Heat the mixure in the microwave for 45 seconds on high. Set aside to cool.
In a mixing bowl, combine butter, shortening, confectioner's sugar, vanilla extract and butter extract.
Using and electric mixer, beat on low until combined. Then beat on medium speed for 6-8 minutes.
Next add the heavy cream mixture, and beat on medium speed for another 10 minutes. ( Mixture will appear soupy at first, but will become fluffy.)

Here's another recipe from Ladycakes http://www.ladycakes.com/Recipes/Frostings/European%20Buttercream.htm

I was just going to post something along these lines! I just made imbc, and like you I can appreciate the texture, but the butter is a bit over the top. I'm going to try cutting it with some buttercream, but I was also thinking of adding more egg whites/sugar mixture. Always in search of that perfect buttercream...

Thanks for the responses. I'm thinking it must be similar to the ladycakes recipe (thanks, tiggy2), which I guess is a French-style buttercream (?)- but I'm trying to figure out how they use powdered sugar with that, since they all call for granulated sugar.... maybe it's (in the Freed's description) a typo?

Pjaycakes, thanks for posting the icing recipe with heavy whipping cream. I've made a similar recipe (in fact, it's one of my favorites), but it doesn't have flour in it. I wonder what purpose the flour has? Is it for cutting the sweetness, or for enhancing the texture? I need to try that sometime!

Akgirl10, I noticed that the Freed's site said their most requested icing was 50/50. I bet mixing the two really cuts some of the over-whelming butter taste. I think I'll try that with imbc and my usual shortening/butter-based icing, as well. Good luck!

Thanks everyone!

The recipe pjaycakes posted looks similar - if not the same- as a very old recipe I've seen in MBN that has many different names including mock whipped cream & 'watergate' icing.

i don,t see the eggs in the post of pjaycakes like the freeds ingredients some people call this recipe that pjcakes posted french buttercream like i said some people so i am just wondering about the freeds recipe with the eggs

I've always thought of "French" buttercream as having egg yolks.... but Toba Garrett has a recipe called "French Vanilla Buttercream" that is very similar to the one pjaycakes posted (no eggs; but cream and flour), so I guess... well, I don't know!

I've been looking through my recipes for a recipe that has powdered sugar and eggs, and I just can't find one.... When I did a search for "Vienna Buttercream" I didn't have much luck. I keep finding recipes that are powdered sugar, butter, milk, and flavoring (which seem to actually be called "Vienna Cream")....

One of the pastry shoppes I worked in made a modified Italian buttercream- we used pasturized egg whites and powdered sugar which were whipped to a meringue and then the butter was added. We used all butter, no margarine. That would be my guess as to how they make it with the powdered sugar. It always came out really well, was very easy to work with and was fabulous with a variety of flavorings.