the iced cupcake - confection divine

I was playing in a cool program called Picasa which I use for editing pictures and creating cool collages. I'm not photoshop savvy, yet.

I made these for three little girls I adore more than anything - my three youngest nieces. Two are 7 and one is only 3. Lord knows why they're crazy about me, but I'll take it! I love their affection and energy.

Icing makes a cake. Period. It's the icing that gives you the sugar rush and delirious high you experience when eating cake. A cake is complete when it is iced. Compris?

The recipe I used is a popular one that was on Martha Stewart's website as well as 52 Cupcakes - it's called Billy's Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes. I added more baking powder (their recipe called for 1 tablespoon), and only used cake flour (though the recipe on the website uses all purpose and cake flour). The method doesn't involve initial creaming of the butter and sugar like most cake recipes. But I've been using this recipe for a long time now, and having said that, it makes no big difference if you use this method or the popular cream-butter-and-sugar first method (and then adding alternately dry/wet ingredients with slow mixing speeds to just combine.) You just really shouldn't overbeat the ingredients.

Makes about 30 cupcakes
3 cups cake flour
2 cups castor sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
250g unsalted butter, cut into pieces
4 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 325°. Line cupcake pans with paper liners; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt; mix on low speed until combined. Add butter, mixing until just coated with flour.

2. In a large glass measuring cup, whisk together eggs, milk, and vanilla. With mixer on medium speed, add wet ingredients in 3 parts, scraping down sides of bowl before each addition; beat until ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat.

3. Divide batter evenly among liners, filling about two-thirds full. Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 17 to 20 minutes.

4. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat process with remaining batter. Once cupcakes have cooled, use a small offset spatula to frost tops of each cupcake. Decorate with sprinkles, if desired. Serve at room temperature.

Billy's Vanilla Buttercream

250g unsalted butter, room temperature
6 to 8 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter until smooth and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. With mixer on low speed, add 6 cups sugar, milk, and vanilla; mix until light and fluffy. If necessary, gradually add remaining 2 cups sugar to reach desired consistency.

I really love that icing. My mum uses water instead of milk for the icing and it tastes fine too. Also, don't add a whole lot of milk at first - in fact, I probably only use 1/4 cup or 2 tablespoons of milk to make the icing smoother. Now for the icing - I wanted to pipe flowers on the cupcakes and had no idea how to. I bought a nozzle for piping grass and one for piping petals. You can see a good indication of different types of nozzles for petals here. I also saw this video on youtube showing how to actually pipe flowers. She makes it look so easy! Keep watching, she demonstrates the piping after 2 minutes. All my petals look different, and it was a time consuming, shoulder-aching, teeth-grinding job.



If you're curious about piping grass, the nozzle looks like this. It also looks like spaghetti to me. It's easy to use and cute to eat.

Finally, a little tip from myself, a novice/intermediate baker: you can make your cupcakes look awesome by buying those little edible flowers or pearls at baking stores. Yay!