Frosting always finishes a cupcake and they look fantastic. As much as I love to make cupcakes look beautiful with all that wonderful sugary goodness – I don’t always like to eat it.
Decorators Frosting
I’m still learning and experimenting with Cake Decorating. I wanted to share my latest creation.
I decorated Minnie Mouse for my little 2 year old. She loves Minnie. I’m not a great artist like my mom, but I can trace with the best of them.
I found a coloring picture of Minnie Mouse on Pinterest and went to work. I cut the picture apart and placed each piece one at a time on the cake and traced around it with a tooth pick. Then I outlined everything in black decorator frosting. Then it was pretty easy – I filled in the blanks.
There was a time not to long ago when I would have said, “I can’t do that.” Well now I say, “Hey, I’m getting better.” I think I have too much fun creating these birthday cakes.
I wish I had taken for more pictures, but as always I forgot.
I don’t like a lot of frosting on my cake. I know, than why do you bother decorating then. Because they turn out so cute and I’ve found some frosting recipes that I like.
And most important – when your the one decorating you get to control how much frosting is going on the cake. It’s the best job for the birthday party.
Decorators Frosting
2 pound bag powdered sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla (I need to invest in clear vanilla)
1 cup shortening
dash of salt
1 teaspoon butter flavor
Mix well. You will need to experiment with how much milk. You might need more for softer frosting, or less for stiffer.
For my Minnie cake I added milk.
Tip: Add milk in small amounts.
Princess Cupcakes
My daughter is going through a princess phase, so for her birthday this year I made princess cupcakes. I got the idea from here. They were so easy to make and everyone loved them I just had to share. Savannah was lucky we celebrated her birthday twice so she of course got princess cupcakes twice.
I had decorated with a straight buttercream frosting in the past, but had problems with it melting because of the heat of my hands. I then tried a straight shortening recipe which was much to sweet, so I played with the recipe and this is what I ended up using and everyone loved it.
Mary Catherine
Crusting Buttercream Frosting
1/2 c shortening
2 tbls salted butter
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp butter flavor
Generous pinch of salt
1/2 – 3/4 c milk
5 c powdered sugar
Directions:
1. Beat shortening, butter, vanilla, butter flavor, salt, and about 1 cup of powdered sugar until a bit fluffy.
2. Alternate adding powdered sugar and milk until desired consistency is achieved. (Don’t be afraid to add more milk. The first time I stopped, my frosting was much to stiff and I hurt my hands trying to pipe it).
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| Strawberry Fluff |
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| Gluten-Free Cornbread |
Checkerboard Cake
We are having fun this year celebrating birthdays. One thing we are doing is having fun with cakes. I asked David our oldest son what kind of cake he would like he said “Crumby Cake“. Now this was a surprise because that is Robert’s favorite cake. He then said, “no let’s make it more challenging, make a two layer checkerboard cake.” I immediately retorted, that a true “Checkerboard Cake” has tree layers and I could do that, secretly knowing that my daughters both have the magic tool to make one.
This was going to be a fun project, but how to decorate it.
David is a huge Seattle Seahawks fan, that was the answer. Here is David’s
“Seattle Seahawks Checkerboard Cake”.
Well at least what it looked like before we cut it for the surprise center.
First things first. I made my favorite plain white cake with a few changes to the measurements and directions. Because it is a three layer cake it needs a bit more batter.
1 cup Butter
1 cups sugar
1 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 cups milk
1/4 cup cocoa powder
Cream butter and sugar together until light. Add eggs and vanilla, beat until fluffy. Sift dry ingredients together and add alternately with milk. Divide batter in half into two separate bowls. Add enough water to the 1/4 cup of cocoa powder to make a medium paste (about the same consistency of the batter). Stir into one bowl of batter. In the other bowl of batter I added green food coloring (team Color).
Just to help make sure your layers come out of the pan perfectly line the bottom with parchment paper.
Using a large spoon carefully pour batter into the separate divider sections of the magic tool (checkerboard baking set) that can be purchased at www.target.com and other on line stores. Be careful to get the different colors of batter at the same level.
Repeat for the other two pans. Be sure to make two layers the same. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes. Cool. Assemble cake with frosting in between layers, putting the different layer in the center. Frost cake with butter cream frosting.
Butter Cream Frosting
1/3 cup butter
Pinch of salt
3 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Cream butter, salt, vanilla and one cup powdered sugar until light and fluffy. Add remaining powdered sugar and milk alternately, beating until smooth and spreading consistency.
Cutting into the cake is always fun and a surprise to those who have no idea because you can’t tell from the outside. You can make any color combination you desire. Mary Catherine made a red and green one for Christmas one year. Have and enjoy.
Mary Ellen
Cutting into the cake is always fun and a surprise to those who have no idea because you can’t tell from the outside. You can make any color combination you desire. Mary Catherine made a red and green one for Christmas one year. Have and enjoy.
Mary Ellen
You might also like these fun cake ideas :
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| Caterpillar Cupcakes |
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| Taco Cake |
Whipped No Powdered Sugar Frosting
There is nothing worse than trying to make frosting only to find you forgot to buy more powdered sugar. This is the predicament I found myself in a few weeks ago. I had found a great Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcake recipe, had made them ahead of time so they were cool enough to frost. I went to make the frosting only to realize, what I thought was a bag of powdered sugar, was a bag of sweet rice flour. I was devastated. I did not have the time to go shopping, what was I going to do? We could have just had cupcakes without frosting, but that seemed wrong. So, I did what I feel I do best. I used Google.
Turns out, there are plenty of frosting recipes out there that do not use powdered sugar. I had no idea! A whole new world of frosting just opened before my eyes. I found one at ourbestbites.com. This is an interesting recipe, it uses a white sauce combined with a creamed butter and sugar mixture. It looked interesting and I had all the ingredients. I followed her advice and doubled the recipe to make sure I had enough for all my cupcakes. I was unsure just how long to cook the white sauce, so I think I did not cook it long enough, my frosting was really soft. But held its own and everyone loved them!
Mary Catherine
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| Dark Chocolate Brownies |
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| Blueberry Muffins |
