Here's my dilemma...I've been trying different butter only butter cream recipes, and they all fall short in one area or another. I'm trying to build my business on the distinction of making my cakes "gourmet and homemade", which means that I'd really like to stay away from any part crisco/shortening icings (I hope that doesn't sound snotty - I really think butter-only is far superior tasting).

The progression has been like this, I started with Colette's meringue bc, but it's a little more work than I want to deal with every time I make icing AND it doesn't take color well at all, BUT, I really like that it's meringue based, that it uses granulated sugar instead of confectioners sugar and of course, it's all butter.

Ok, so then I found 2 recipes on CC that work well - one is French Butter cream, which is really good, but again, a little extra work (cooking, cooling, etc.) the other is called Very Best Buttercream, which met all the above criteria, HOWEVER, it sweats after it's been frozen, which is really unappealing and is really hard to top coat if the crumb coat is frozen. Do you all think if I added a little bit of flour to the milk in the recipe it would stop doing this? Should I just use the French butter cream recipe? What do you all recommend??

what if you just refrigerate the crumb coat instead of freezing? would that help?

I personally love the Italian meringue buttercream recipe on this site........however you have to cook the water and sugar.......but I don't think it's too fussy......once you know how to make it.......it took me just about the same amount of time it takes to make a regular crisco/butter buttercream......only I was whipping the egg whites while the sugar was cooking....but I still didn't spend more than 10 minutes making it and the taste is WORTH every second of that time.

How about if you skip the crumb coat all together and just ice the cake with the icer tip and smooth it. Then you wouldn't have to worry about it!! I never crumb coat, and find that it's a time saver!!