I made a french vanilla buttercream icing from Toba Garrett's book and the only thing that I did differently from the instructions was use a beater attachment on my mixer instead of a paddle one. I think that it made the whipping cream turn to butter. Now it just tastes like vanilla butter. my boyfriend thinks that this will still taste good in white cake I'm doing but I'm thinking of adding some sort of flavoring, icing sugar and or meringue powder to fluff it up a bit. ( Thinking of Hazelnut flavor) any suggestions??? as it would be such a waste of ingredients

This type of icing can look curdled before it turns smooth. Continue mixing for several minutes until it smooths out. You may also try refrigerating it a bit then mixing some more if your butter was really soft when you added it.

Make sure you add ALL the butter. When trying this type of recipe for the first time, I have been tempted not to throw good butter after bad when it looks like the icing is not shaping up after 4 sticks of butter, but it's the last stick that seals the deal.

If you don't have a Kitchen Aid type of mixer, it may take longer. This is a tasty buttercream. The reason you heated the sugar with the milk is so that you wouldn't have anything gritty in the icing, so adding pwdr sugar will put some grit into the icing.

Let me know if you were able to salvage it.