icing: just keep mixing

Not that I am an expert, but I thought I had a word of helpful advice to people trying out baking. Icing is a little intimidating. As described in the post about butter from a scientific/cooking perspective, it really does matter what temperature it is at when it goes into the recipe. Whenever I have made icing, especially the first few times, I always have a little panic attack.

How will all that confectioner's sugar and that hunk of relatively hard butter become fluffy icing?

Oh NO! It just turned into clumps. Well, now I guess it is sort of sandy looking.

And then, bam. Somehow, when I zoned out or something, it became icing.

So it is a little bit like what Dory says in Finding Nemo, which I recently watched with my students, "just keep swimming, swimming, swimming." When it comes to icing, yes, that relatively solid butter and all that sugar will turn into icing. Just let the mixer do its thing and a couple of minutes later, it really will turn into the texture of icing.

I took a few pictures of making icing today (note: I think it was my favorite icing so far, for the chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing) throughout the process to prove that it really does magically come together. So have faith in your appliances and just keep mixing...