No trans fats - High Ratio, palm oil, Crisco or Butter?

This brings up another question -- what does high ratio shortening do that good old Crisco or butter can not do? What about palm oil shortening?

For those who have never used hi-ratio shortening, consider the store bought cakes which have a light fluffy frosting. Most likey that shortening is high ratio shortening (with emulsifiers which will not crust up as quickly as Crisco does -- which is a problem for high altitudes/dry climates anyway as it crusts way too fast so work FAST) great for cake decorators. Another type which pastry chefs use is palm oil shortening. Finally, there is the old favorite of butter, much controversy over trans fats, saturated fats (wathc the butter here) but in the end with butter you are not able to achieve a really WHITE icing, so you must settle for ivory colored icing or mellow yellow icing.

What a choice?

I tend to use the ingredients which lend themselves to what type of icing I'm making. If it's chocolate butter cream -- butter works fine as does shortening, palm oil shortening, hi-ratio shortening or even crisco. We are not even touching on the issue of temps and how much butter (if any to use) as well as cream cheese or the FAUX icings made with Dreamwhip or coolwhip folded into buttercream (then there is the italian buttercream, american buttercream, swiss butter cream, I can go on and on). But if it is a WHITE buttercream -- all bets are off!