So, I had a little foible with watering down some of my frosting for a crumb coat too much and having my frosting slide off the cake while I tried to frost over the crumb coat. It meant that I had to dispose of some of my frosting and now I don't think I have enough to decorate (and hopefully afterwards frost mini cupcakes for my daughter's class).

I am out of powdered sugar and will run to the store to buy more to make up another batch, however, I use the ButterCream Dream recipe which calls for 3 tsps. of clear vanilla extract and after making all my frosting yesterday I only have maybe 1 tsp of clear vanilla. My supermarket won't have clear vanilla and I have about 4 hours until this cake needs to be done and stores where i can buy clear vanilla likely won't open for a few hours.

So, I was thinking that I would use the new frosting with less vanilla for my piping/decorating since it won't make too much difference. Or I can use regular vanilla extract - but I didn't know about the color issue. I was also wondering since I will need frosting for cupcakes (and there is a chance that I might need to re-frost 2 small cakes due to sliding icing) can I add more vanilla to made frosting or will it just mess it up?

I use the Buttercream Dream recipe all the time--everyone loves it!
Personally, I never use the clear vanilla. I don't like that super bright white frosting look, like you used 100% crisco in your icing. Just keep mixing it up and it will be white enough.

Sliding frosting - depending on where you live (humidity factor) I never use all the water in my icing. When I moved from Boston to South Louisiana in the summer (read: super humid!), I didn't add any water to the Buttercream Dream!

Adding vanilla - I think you could add vanilla to your icing if you put everything back into your mixing bowl and mix it up again. Not sure, never tried it before though.

Good luck!

The brown vanilla will turn the icing a slight ivory color, but that's the only difference that I can tell. That's what I use when a bride wants any shade of "off white".

Thanks for the tips! I was actually smiling ear to ear when I found clear vanilla extract by McCormick at the supermarket! So, problem averted.

Re: the sliding frosting - I live in Boston, so not a humidity problem. I added WAY too much milk to dilute for a crumb coat since I didn't wait for frosting to come to room temp. Lesson learned.

Thanks!

Glad to help--tell the North Shore of Boston hello, I miss it!!