baking!

With the cooler weather upon us, my self-imposed baking hiatus is at an end.  Last week, I made cupcakes, chocolate chip cookie-brownie bars, cinnamon rolls (and if you haven’t tried Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls, you are definitely missing out!), cookies, and homemade dinner rolls.  I was still feeling blue, and all that baking was therapeutic.   The kids and neighbors were really happy too.   It was the first time I ever made bread, and boy did this house smell good last week!

All of that baking made me think it was a good time to share with all of you two of the easiest ways to decorate a cupcake.  Take your favorite frosting, a bag for your frosting, and a 1M tip.  A 1M is a little bigger than your average frosting tip.   Set up your tip, then fill the bag half way with frosting.  The easiest way to fill the bag is to take a tall glass and “cuff” the top half of the bag over the edge.  Then fill it up to the top of the glass, take it out of the glass, twist the top closed, and pipe away.  Uniform pressure is the key to good frosting, and always remember to remove the pressure before you pull up the tip so you don’t get any “tails” or trails.   For both of these, you keep your tip straight up and down – a 90 degree angle to the top of the cupcake.

For the ice cream looking swirly top, start at the outside of the cupcake, and make a circle swirling back to where you began, and towards the center.   As you pipe towards the center, you are going to build your frosting a little over the outer row, to give it a little height.  When you get to the middle, release the pressure on the bag and then pull up slightly in the center.   That’s how you get that little “kiss” in the center.

For the rose effect, you use the same tip, but start at the center, then work your way outside in circles.  Don’t build up the frosting by overlapping like you do on the swirl one – you want it to lay flat.  The tip does all the work for you.  Just be sure to let up the pressure before you get to the very end, and then gently pull across to finish the rose.   The red streak was done by striping the inside of the bag with red gel food color, but these look just as pretty in solid colors.

Hope you all try it out!  And thank you very much to all of you for your kind words about my Godfather.  I truly appreciate it.

Best,

Stephanie