Frosting cupcakes

I typically just use the standard tips to decorate cupcakes, but decided to splurge and get some of the extra large tips.

Here are 3 of the tips that I bought along with one of the standard tips for comparison (I thought I'd try a little bit of artsy staged photography):

(Wilton 195, Bakery Crafts 9P, Bakery Crafts 9FT, Bakery Crafts 9CS)

I didn't put a lot of effort into frosting these cupcakes as I was just going to wipe them off to re-frost for another purpose, but I wanted to try them out:

The Bakery Craft 9CS tip is likely to be my new go to cupcake frosting tip. I love it!

Exhausted!

Week before last was Fall break which means midterm. I knew that this was going to be rough, but I had absolutely no idea. The classes themselves are a piece of cake (we're on a baking blog I couldn't resist), but the time involved is kicking my butt.

I typically fill my time with one random project or another and end up stressed and grouchy regardless. Now my stressed and grouchy is on overload. Yay for the people who have to deal with me daily!

I mentioned in my first post that I am a whiner. In case you forgot, I am a whiner.

I'm halfway which means I've done four speeches and have four more to go. Halfway which means I've completed 8 weeks and have 8 weeks to go.

I can do this?

Color Explosion cake

Since I saw this cake I have been wanting to do one of my own. I didn't use the grass tip like she did, I wanted mine to be more like stars.

Gather your supplies, pick your colors and begin adding a color at a time.

Once you've used all of your colors start going back through them to gradually fill in any empty spaces:

Final result:

Butter mints

My family used to make butter mints for weddings... probably still do. I always loved them and got the urge to try making them myself.

You can use any type of mold and any color that you want.

Butter mints store well in the freezer and would be a great after dinner mint option for guests

First time cookies

Chocolate chip cookies are one of the first things you bake as an American child so I wanted to start there.

I'll chronicle our progress, but first a couple pictures of the end result:

Chocolate Chocolate chip cookies:

Chocolate Chip cookies:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup shortening

1/2 tsp butter extract

1/2 cup softened butter

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 cups milk chocolate chips

And now for the Instructions:

Gather all needed ingredients and prepare your area:

Add white sugar, brown sugar, butter extract, shortening, and softened butter to the mixing bowl and cream together on low:

Add vanilla extract and eggs and mix on low until incorporated:

Mix flour, salt, and baking soda in a separate bowl. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients in the mixing bowl until fully incorporated:

Add 1/4 cup cocoa powder if desired to the batter for chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Mix in chocolate chips by hand:

Spoon onto lined cookie sheets and bake at 350 degrees for approx 8 minutes. Watch your cookies until you get a good idea of how long they will actually take in your own oven:

Allow cookies to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheets before moving to wire cooling racks:

Eat your cookies~!

Feedback from the baker: "It was good, it was fun, but not as fun as I thought it would be." Maybe cupcakes will be more fun.

Beginning Baker!

This weekend I'm teaching someone to make cookies and then we'll try cupcakes another weekend. Pretty sure this person has never baked anything that wasn't meat before in their life... this will be fun!

I'll post the end results~

Ice Cream Cake

This was an interesting challenge. White cake on the bottom, cookies and cream ice cream on top, finished off with buttercream frosting.

I baked my white cake in a rectangle Springform pan. I let it cool for 5 minutes and then removed it from the pan. Once the cake was cool I put the pan back together and applied the ice cream over the cake.

Working with the ice cream was interesting... I had to soften it and spread carefully over the cake. I didn't freeze the cake layer before spreading the ice cream on top and it started to break apart in one area. When I do this again I'll definitely freeze the cake so there is a little more stability.

Once I spread the ice cream on top I left it to freeze for about 6 hours before I tried frosting it. With the frosting I had to work very quickly as every time the ice cream would start to melt on an outer edge the frosting wouldn't stick.

The surface didn't turn out as smooth as I'd have liked, but I'm happy with the overall result. Had I done a "crumb layer" that may have made it much easier to work with. Unfortunately I had to make this the same day it was to be eaten due to a ridiculously hectic schedule for this week. The cake truly needs to freeze over night before being eaten. Eating the cake with the soft frosting just wasn't as good as it was when we ate it after it had been frozen overnight giving the texture more consistency.

Frosting your cookies

I use a #2 tip for the outline and a #3 tip to flood in the icing.

When icing the cookies you want to do one color at a time, one section at a time. Let each section dry for 30 minutes or so before moving on.

Pipe an outline of each section and quickly fill that section in with frosting. You can jiggle the cookie softly to get the icing to settle into the outline smoothly without running over. You can do sections that are not going to flow into the first section you've decorated (For the Mario cookies I did all of the white dots first and then filled in the red or green sections once those had dried for 30 minutes).

Cookies need to sit for 24 hours before they can be stacked without disturbing the icing.

Royal Icing Recipe

Ingredients:

6 tbs warm water

3 tbs meringue powder (you can buy this at Michaels or Hobby Lobby. Walmart has it in the decorating section near the crafts)

1 tsp cream of tartar

4 cups (1 lbs) powdered sugar (confectioners' sugar)

1 tsp clear vanilla extract (regular will tint your frosting off white)

1 tsp almond extract

Directions:

in mixer bowl, pour in the warm water and the meringue powder. Using the paddle attachment, mix on low until it is frothy and thickened...about 30 seconds.

Add the cream of tartar and mix for 30 seconds more.

Pour in all the icing sugar at once. (if you're not careful the powdered sugar will go EVERYWHERE when you turn on the mixer. I hold a damp towel around the mixer while doing this step)

Mix on low for a full 10 minutes. The icing will get thick and creamy.

Cover the bowl with a dampened tea-towel to prevent crusting and drying out while storing.

Separate and tint with coloring as desired.

Once colored, thin with small amounts of warm water (I use a spray bottle to ensure that I'm only adding a little water at a time) until you reach the desired consistency.

For flooding work on a cookie you want to be able to use a knife to slice a line through your frosting and have it close in 15 seconds. I find that somewhere between 15 and 20 seconds is ideal to insure that you can smoothly flood your cookie.

Decorator Sugar Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter softened

1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

1 egg

2-3 tsp flavoring (pick what you like, I prefer almond)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour (add 1/4 cup more if your dough is too sticky)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

Directions:

Cream together softened butter and confectioner's sugar.

Crack the egg into a separate bowl and add the flavouring.

Add egg and flavouring mixture to the butter and sugar mixture and mix until the egg is thoroughly incorporated.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add little by little to the wet mixture.

I can tell the dough is ready when most of it sticks to the paddle. When I touch it, it has a little give, but does not stick to my fingers.

Allow to rest for 5 minutes.

Roll out on parchment to about 1/4 an inch thick, use flour for dusting as necessary and cut cookies as desired.

Bake at 400 degrees for 7-8 minutes.

makes 2 - 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

Notes about her recipe:

• The dough does not need to be refrigerated.
• The recipe doubles well
• Baking times are approximate. You must know your oven. Watch them the first few times you bake them. If the cookies are browning you've gone too far.
• This dough can be flavored any way you'd like.
• The cookies freeze well.
• There is a lot of leavener in these cookies. This is not a typo. The general rule is less leavener so they don't spread.
• This recipe does spread a little. If you don't like that add a little flour.
• If you don't like salt, leave it out altogether.
• If you only have salted butter, use that and don't add salt.
• I prefer decorating day-old cookies. They are less likely to leach oil back into your icing if they have had a day or two to "dry out". They are still soft however.

I got this recipe here and she has a nice photo tutorial to go along with the recipe. This is nearly her exact posting with a little variance based upon my own preferences.