Monday, March 02, 2015

Cupcakes-and Why I am Addicted to Piping Bags

A little while ago, I told you about the cake I made for the twins' birthday. I also made cupcakes for their classroom. Using a size 1M and 2D Wilton tips, I made these creations. Once you get your hands on a piping bag, you won't ever decorate cupcakes any other way. This was much neater and more professional looking than my old method which just consisted of using a butter knife to spread icing over the top, and inevitably all over my fingers and the sides of the cupcake as well. Here is a cupcake decorating tutorial.

The class and teachers loved them! The recipe was an egg-free one that a neighbor gave me and I used this buttercream (the same one I used for the recent birthday cake). I used Wilton's gel food coloring. You have to add a lot more of the coloring than you think to get these rich colors. A lot of the online tutorials show people adding a little bit at a time with a toothpick, but I ended up using a cereal bowl full of icing and adding about 1/2 tsp or so to get the rich colors. This time I made the buttercream fresh and let me tell you, it makes it so much easier to decorate. Don't refrigerate the icing before you decorate! I learned the hard way that it takes too long to warm up and is hard to work with. Fresh-made is significantly easier.

So pretty, if buttercream didn't have so many calories, I would find all sorts of reasons to decorate with it!