The original recipe is from a Paula Deen magazine. The original recipe asks for Crisco in the icing (I substituted the Crisco for unsalted butter) and they also wanted 8, YES 8, cups of icing sugar for the icing. By cup six, it was sweet...way too sweet! I could not go any further with the icing and I actually thought it was way too sickeningly sweet so I added creme cheese. Everything is better with creme-cheese! Even though you can use all the icing, I didn't use all of it and put my leftovers in a freezer bag and into the freezer it went for when we make cupcakes. :)