18 May 2010

Making beautiful cupcakes!

Many big cities, and a bunch of smaller towns, have bakeries that make the most beautifully decorated cupcakes.  The worst part is that these cupcakes can cost anywhere between $3-6, each... and frankly, I think that is ridiculous when you can just decorate them yourselves.

I had to bake a bunch of cupcakes last week for people's birthdays, graduations, house warming gifts, etc.  For the first time, I didn't want to decorate them by hand with a knife, I wanted them to look like they were bought in those same stores that charge an outrageous amount of money.

SO, I made a TON of strawberry cupcakes and decorated them with vanilla buttercream icing.  The recipe for the cakes is found hereThis recipe made about 36 cupcakes total (remember it is cake flour and not all purpose flour).  The recipe for the buttercream can be found here.

One of the finished cupcakes!

To decorate the cupcakes you simply need the following: 1 icing decorating bag and the tip 2D made by Wilton, these can be found at Hobby Lobby or any cake decorating store (fyi, you do not need a coupler for this tip).

This is the 2D tip, it can also be used to make these flowers when decorating cakes!

These clear decorating bags can come in large packs, and are disposable or you can clean and reuse them like I do!

Now, like everything else when it comes to decorating, practice and a LOT of patience is necessary.  After the cupcakes have cooled you can use your 2D tip, fill the bag with icing, and begin decorating!

1.  Start with the tip pointing towards the outside of the cupcake.  Slowly begin to swirl the bag around from the outside-in, using medium pressure.  Make sure you decorate the uggliest cupcakes first, because if you're like me, they don't turn out looking very pretty!

These are sloppy... yucky... not swirled.  But it's okay!! I kept going!

2.  Keep practicing, and eventually they will look like these!

Just like the store ones :)

Happy Decorating!!

3 comments:

  1. Im jealous! I can never do that small flower with the 2d!! grrr
    http://cuppycakebakes.blogspot.com

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  2. It takes a lot of practice!! Cute blog by the way! Those no bake cookies may save my day since I have no kitchen at the moment!

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  3. They were supposed to be mine... sniff sniff :( lol....

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