I’ve always thought that my cake and cupcake decorating
skills were subpar. I’d have great
flavors, great textures and then you’d look at it and be like – well at least
it tastes great. Or worse: the thought
that appearances are deceiving and that it tastes much better than it
looks.
I’ve tried pastry bags with tips, icing guns, and no matter
what I do I’d always end up with more icing on the plate, on the counters or on
me rather than on the cupcakes.
But, as most people know, I’m stubborn. And I’m going to keep trying at it!
So I researched. I
looked in my cook books, I looked at Pinterest, I looked at blogs. And then I found it! Someone explaining how those darn pastry bags
work and how to get that bakery style swirl.
(I was starting to think you only learned it in pastry school!)
What I found out is that all along I’ve been using the wrong
size tip?!? No wonder it looked terrible and would take f-o-r-e-v-e-r.
So thanks to Sara and her blog Our Best
Bites I was finally able to achieve some decent looking cupcakes!
I bought the Ateco set that Sara recommended and tried out
her directions this weekend.
The three big things that I learned were:
- The consistency of the icing is critical
- Be sure to pack the icing into the pastry bag so there are no air bubbles.
- Icing tip size matters – use a large or a jumbo size tip
I call these cupcakes spring funfetti cupcakes with very
vanilla frosting and they are so easy!
99% of the time I
make my cupcakes from cake mix, but the trick is to always make homemade
frosting. You can doctor cake mix to be
as good as homemade and you don’t have to worry about the leavening and whether
it will rise or not because all of that is premeasured for you!
- One box of white cake mix (whatever is on sale!)
- Eggs (according to the directions)
- Melted butter (same quantity as the box says for oil)
- 1-2 tsp of vanilla
- Spring sprinkles
Preheat to the oven to the temperature on the cake mix and
line a cupcake tin with liners.
Melt the butter, Mix cake mix, eggs, butter and vanilla in
the mixer and beat for 2 minutes. Add
the sprinkles and mix to combine. I didn’t measure the sprinkles, I just added
enough to make the batter speckled and colorful.
The trick is to always make homemade buttercream. I used Food
Network’s Quick Vanilla Buttercream Frosting, but increased it to 2 tsp of
vanilla.
And voilà! Beautiful bakery quality icing job finished with a little bit of sanding sugar!
