Buttercream Icing

I found the original recipe of this on allrecipes, but I modified it some to what I had on hand and I cut the recipe in half. I iced 24 cupcakes with plenty of icing with this. The icing was so yummy!!! The recipe did call for shortening and no butter, and some people said they used half shortening and half butter, but I had butter flavored shortening on hand, so I thought it would work great, and it was delicious! I couldn't find my decorating bags and tips, so if you don't have one, a tip is to put all the frosting in a gallon ziplock bag, cut the tip off (start very small, you can always make the hole bigger) and pipe it out onto the cupcakes. If you have a stand mixer, I recommend using it for this recipe, but a hand mixer works just as well.

Ingredients
-1 cup butter flavored shortening
-4 cups confectioners' sugar
-1/4 tsp salt
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-3oz (6 Tbsp) milk (recipe called for heavy cream but I didn't want to buy it for 3oz worth)
-food coloring, if you desire

Directions
Cream shortening until fluffy. Add confectioners' sugar and continue creaming until well blended. This can take a few minutes. Add remaining ingredients and mix on low until well blended. Whip on high until fluffy. This can also take a few minutes.

I added about 6 drops of red food coloring to make it pink and then I sprinkled with pink sugar crystals on top.