I need a recipe for a good chocolate frosting to cover a cake. My grandson wants a Scooby Doo cake for his birhday and I want to use chocolate frosting. Using the star tip to fill in the design, I need a stiff
frosting to keep the shape of the stars. Can I just flavor a buttercream frosting or should I use some other kind of frosting? If I flavor the buttercream what should I use. How about a real shortcut by using a premade canned chocolate frosting with something to stiffen it up. I still want it to taste good though. Any ideas? Thanks in advance for any hints you have to give.

Just use your shortening buttercream recipe you use now and add about 1/4 cup of cocoa powder and a bit more water..

I do know that there are some people that use the canned chocolate and it works just fine for them ... I think I have read that they add more powder sugar to make it stiffer...

Thank you very much Jackie. That is exactly what I needed to know.

Oops. Sorry LadyCake. I should have thanked YOU. I really do appreciate the information.

Glad to be able to offer the help...

I know you're already done but I still wanted to post. For a creamy dreamy chocolate BC icing that takes a little work: make your regular BC recipe and ganache. Mix together. It's to die for. It makes a milk chocolate colored icing. For a darker icing I add brown coloring.

I use ladycakes suggestion most of the time. But when I really want to impress and I have the time, ganache mixed with BC is the way to go.

How much ganache do you add per batch of buttercream icing? The icing you mentioned sounds great