Peanut Butter Icing

A sweet mixture of sugar and other ingredients used to coat and fill cakes, cookies and other pastries. The other ingredients may include butter or other shortening, milk, eggs and flavorings such as vanilla extract, chocolate or citrus. Frosting may be uncooked (simple buttercream, made by creaming shortening with sugar) or cooked (boiled frosting, in which hot sugar syrup is combined with egg white, and Italian and French buttercream, in which hot sugar syrup is combined with whipped egg whites or yolks, respectively, and butter). Frosting can be very thick and unctuous or thin and glossy, but it must be thick enough to adhere to the surface of the item being coated. Depending on its consistency it may be spread in a smooth, even layer, swirled with the back of a spoon of spatula, or piped in decorative shapes and designs.