I use butter, shortening, vanilla, heavy whipping cream and powdered sugar. It crusts very nicely. But I don't like a crust on my cupcakes. Can someone give me a good recipe for NON-crusting BC?

The cooked icings like the SMBC and IMBC do not crust, so that may be something to look at.

There are a few recipes using powder sugar that don't crust. One is the Whimsical Bakehouse's recipe, but it has a huge amount of fat in it.

If you want your icing to crust less you can always up the fat (butter/shortening) in the recipe. It will take a lot for it not to crust, but a softer crust might work for ya.

I agree with TexasSugar, more fat or less sugar. You may want to eliminate the whipping cream also. I was having the opposite problem, mine wasn't crusting and I wanted it to. Someone suggested upping the amount of sugar and adding whipped cream and that worked great, my icing crusts perfectly now.

The above two are correct .. its the ratio of sugar to fat that causes it.

More sugar ... more crusting.

I always remember it because more sugar makes it thicker or (stiffer) and stiff or crusted icing will hold its shape.

Thank you, everyone. I'm going to try some SMBC right now and see if that's what I'm trying to get for my cupcakes. Then I'll play around with my fat/sugar ratio on my american bc and see if that makes a difference.