This frosting tastes amazing. Omit the chocolate when you need a white frosting. Either way it will be delicious. Make sure cake or cookies are completely cool as it can melt a little easily.

This recipe is great when it works. Occasionally it won't set up and its grainy - can anyone help me figure out what's going wrong?

I found that if the sugar mixture has not been cooked long enough it will give that grainy chocolate look. I take the pot and put it back on a very low burner and constantly stir until the mixture is glossy brown. Sometimes it takes another 4-5 minutes. I then add the butter and vanilla. Good luck.

The best way to prevent graininese is to use semi sweet high quality chocolate like Valrhona 55-56% coca and no added sugar. The one thing most frosted cakes get wrong is too much sweetness. You have to balance the overall sweetness of the bite of all layers. By using high quality semisweet and no added sugar you get a very balanced cake sweetness in the overall bite. You want to taste the flavors of the chocolate not get overwhelmed by sugar. But if you want more sweetness just use a higher sweetness level of chocolate. Its not tgat bakers chocolate no sugar with adding sugar dooes not work it just takes a bit more skill. Sweetned chocolate is practically full proof.

Understand butter can also cause this if it's not fully creamed into the mix.

If you want a pour/waterfall frosting where you pour it over the top use a simple 1:1 ratio and nothing else. But you need to use quality chocolate and heavy cream.