Convenience

• It's hard to beat the convenience of store-bought icing. Just open the can and you're ready to go. In addition to buttercream icing, you'll find dozens of other flavors, such as chocolate, lemon or strawberry. Commercial icings are a smart choice for quick treats. Use them to decorate cookies or cupcakes for the school bake sale or spread them over brownies.

Flavor

• Like most foods, homemade icing almost always tastes better than the stuff you buy in a can. The reason is that homemade buttercream icing contains that magic ingredient -- real butter. Butter imparts a soft, creamy texture and mellow, but rich, flavor. In addition to butter, homemade icing usually has only a few ingredients -- powdered sugar and vanilla. Commercial icings typically contain powdered sugar, shortening, corn syrup, cornstarch and preservatives. You might notice a slight chemical aftertaste.

Texture

• Both homemade buttercream and commercial icings are soft and easy to spread. Homemade buttercream tends to thicken more when refrigerated. Neither type of icing works well for decorating cakes if you plan on making roses and other designs. For cake decorating, it's best to make a homemade icing from part butter and part shortening. You can also add cream cheese for extra flavor. Shortening has a firmer consistency than butter so you can decorate with it. Fondant is a completely different product that rolls out smoothly to cover cakes, but can't be piped through a piping tip.

Storage

• Commercial icing lasts longer in storage than homemade buttercream icing, simply because it contains shortening, rather than butter. You can store it unopened at room temperature for up to one year. Opened, store it in the refrigerator for up to three months, or at room temperature for up to four weeks. Store homemade buttercream icing in the refrigerator and use it within three weeks.

Price

• Homemade food is usually less expensive than commercially produced foods, but this isn't necessarily the case when it comes to icing. Commercial icing usually costs less than $2 a tub, as of 2013. Get it on sale and you might pay less than $1. The cost for 1/2 pound of butter -- which is the amount you'll use for a batch of icing -- is around $1.50. So, just the butter alone can cost more than a can of frosting even before you pay for the powdered sugar.