I almost died of shock when I realised that people actually still read my blog- since I haven’t blogged for about 7 weeks! I was on holidays but holidaying is quite tiring (or you could say, that I’m just lazy) and I could never quite find the time to crop all my (dodgy) photos, post them and write something about them. But since school has started again (*sigh*), I’m back to blogging. Because I spend more time ont he computer during the school term than in the holidays 🙂
I’d actually never made proper cupcakes before- that is, the cupcakes with a buttercake base with cute fondant decorations or buttercream piped on top. I’d only ever made simple chocolate cupcakes with ganache since no one in our family particularly likes buttercakes or buttercream. I’d also never made buttercream before and was nervous about the piping. Although the youtube videos made it look simple, I was sure it was more difficult than it looked.
After searching over the internet for many buttercake recipes, I concluded that they were not all too different. In the end I confided with my own cookbook (to save the trouble of having to print of a recipe…haha). The recipe was great and the cupcakes tasted delicious- even without the icing. Actually we preferred eating them without the icing…. The cupcakes yielded more than I expected, so I had quite a bit left over to eat myself.
The buttercream however was a little more problematic. The recipe called for a large amount of icing sugar for the amount of butter used (9 cups!). I therefore ignored the recipe and just kept adding sugar until it looked like buttercream. By the time I added around half the required amount, it was already tasting too sweet so I stopped there. I think I also added too much milk as the consistency of the buttercream was softer than I had expected- it felt slightly like whipped cream?
I had intended to pipe the swirls which go upwards with a pointy tip (excuse my very bad description!)- the ones which are more popular?? After about 10 trials on a plate and still not satisfied with the results, I gave up (perhaps my tip was too small?) I decided to start from the inside and pipe outwards and make a rose like pattern as I’d seen some people do. This turned out to be much easier than the other method so I piped all of them like this. I’d always thought that this would be harder than the other way……
Cupcake recipe
1/4 cups milk