This is absolutely delicous! It isn't a stiff enough icing to pipe but perfect to spread on a layered cake. YUM!!!! For those who like thiers a little sweeter I added just a touch more icing sugar and the consistency was still perfect.

This was awful. It comes out like water. 2.5 lbs of chocolate is way too much. I couldn't get it to pipe at all and had to trash it and start over because no matter how much sugar or cocoa you add to balance it out, it stays watery and thin. Yes, it's sheeny, because it's essentially melted chocolate with butter added in.

This frosting is perfect, w/ a perfect texture. It has a deep dark chocolate flavor but isn't too sweet. It's wonderful on all rich butter cakes. The trick to making it is to following the method exactly - the melted chocolate and cocoa mixture must be cooled before adding them to the butter mixture. And the butter must be at cool-is room temperature softness, no more (otherwise the frosting will be too soft). Beating sufficiently helps too. Excellent frosting!

I made this frosting from the Martha Stewart Cupcake book to go with the Salted Carmel Chocolate mini cupcake recipe. The recipe indicated that this was the frosting to use. Although the frosting is very tasty, I found that it had only two states runny or rock hard. It must be because of all the butter and chocolate that have such a low melting point. Instead of a nice dollop of frosting, I ended up dipping them like a glaze. The color is beautiful and they dried very shiny and pretty.