So, your friends/family have caught on to the fact you’re a dab hand at producing beautiful cupcakes, naturally they’ll be coming to you from now on for all major events. You’ll do a few for your nephews birthday, a couple as an end of term gift for the teacher, before you know it Aunty Maureen has asked you to do 200 for her neighbours, daughters, best-friends wedding and you’re feeling a little over-whelmed. Worry not. Cupcakes are hardy little things, surviving sub zero temperatures and still thawing out to revert to their wonderful pre-freezer greatness. You can either freeze them with butter icing or without (always on the day they were made though). The only thing you’ll need to add post-thaw are any finishing touches such as sprinkles/sweets/sugarcraft as they don’t survive quite so well. Defrosting them can be done in as little as 30 minutes at room temperature (sometimes longer so please check first before serving one to Derek with the dodgy dentures), so stay calm and look forward to the adoration and admiration you’ll undoubtedly receive!

We’re often asked how to get black-black icing to use on your cake or cupcake, as opposed to grey-black icing. If you’re starting from a plain coloured butter icing it’s guaranteed you’re going to be putting enough food colouring in there to keep your kids dancing on the ceiling for months. In order to reduce this effect, we always start with chocolate butter icing. Substitute a quarter of the icing sugar for cocoa, it’s going to be chocolate-y but I’d imagine that’s preferable to the bitter taste of loads of colouring. You can always add a touch of vanilla extract to help improve the flavour. I’m not going to pretend you won’t still need a fair bit of food colouring, but not quite so much. The kids might be down from the ceiling in time for Christmas to send them back up! And don’t forget, if you’re using the concentrated gel colours they do tend to darken up a couple of hours after you’ve put them in so if you’ve almost achieved the deep colour you’re after, perhaps reward yourself with a cup of tea and a book and come back to it a bit later.

Adaptors are suitable for using with disposable and most re-usable piping bags. The adaptor comes in two parts, one part is positioned inside of the bag and the other part is used to screw the decorating tip onto the outside of the bag.

There are many advantages of using a piping bag adaptor.

As the decorating tip is screwed into place on the outside of the bag, it is then very easy to change tips if you want to use a variety of techniques on your cake or cupcake, with the same bag of icing.

If the thread of the adaptor is covered with the piping bag a very secure seal is formed, which prevents leakage of the icing from the side of the bag. This is especially helpful when you are using a smaller size tip, as there is not so much room for an overlap of bag and tip.

The adaptor reinforces the opening in the piping bag, which can prolong the life of a re-usable piping bag.

There are some disadvantages.

Using a large piping tip requires a larger size adaptor, which can take up a lot of room in the bag. If this is the case then you need to increase the size of your piping bag.

Tip

The adaptor is re-usable, so will need to be removed from the bag to be washed. If the bag has formed a tight seal it can be difficult to remove. If you are using a disposable bag cut the bag off near the top of the adaptor and soak it in hot soapy water. The bag will expand slightly making it easier to remove the adaptor.

* 250g Butter (Hard butter, not spreadable variety)
* 500g Icing Sugar
* 120-150g milk
* Flavouring of your choice

This quantity is enough to decorate 15-24 cakes, depending on the size of your cupcakes and how generous you are with the icing.   Cupcakes of muffin size, generously decorated with large swirls can take up to 50g of butter icing each.

This method assumes the use of an electric mixer, as it is extremely hard work to make a nicely whipped butter icing without one.

1. Take the butter from the fridge in plenty of time to allow it to soften up at room temperature.  Do not mix butter straight from the fridge.
2. Use an electric mixer to mix the butter until it is spread around the mixing bowl.  If you do this before adding the icing sugar it will mix easier and prevent a cloud of icing sugar escaping.
3. Sift the icing sugar into the bowl with the butter.
4. Add the milk and flavouring.  If using a liquid flavouring you may need to decrease the amount of milk.
5. Mix together, starting on a slow speed, until all the ingredients are combined.  Use a lid on your mixer if you have one, otherwise it is best to mix the icing sugar in a bit at a time.
6. Once all the ingredients have combined, increase the mixer speed to a high setting to give the mixture an extremely thorough whip for several minutes.  During this time the mixture should increase in volume and become much lighter in texture.

Flavourings
The easy way is to use liquid flavourings or extracts

* Zest of orange or lemon.
* Liquors
* Chocolate, substitute 20% of the icing sugar with cocoa powder

Why add milk?
Milk will help to soften the mixture and improve the smoothness making it easier to pipe or spread the butter icing.  The milk content can be varied slightly according to temperature of the weather to get just the right consistency.

Adding colour
Use a small amount of liquid or gel based food colouring.  Liquid colourings are acceptable for butter icing as the mixture is already quite moist, although gel based colours are preferable.

Large quantities of coloured butter icing
If you need to make more than one batch of butter icing in exactly the same colour.  It is very difficult to mix and colour each batch separately and get a good colour match, therefore, it is best to mix a small amount of highly coloured icing that can be measured precisely and shared with each batch of icing.

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It can be fiddly and time consuming to fill individual cupcake cases.  The traditional method is to spoon the mixture into the cases, but this can be messy and spills can spoil the look of the cakes.  A much quicker and cleaner method is to use a piping bag.  A large piping bag about 16-21 inches is the best size for this and will complete around 24-36 standard size cupcakes.  Cut a 1 inch hole at the bottom of the bag, put the bag into a large tub, folding the top of the bag over the sides.  This will assist filling the bag and allows both your hands free to pour and scrap the mixture into the piping bag from your mixing bowl.  The mixture can then be piped into the cake cases.  Aim into the centre of the case and squeeze the mixture to the desired level, usually slightly over halfway.

Either disposable or re-usable bags are suitable for this method.

Piping Bags suitable for butter icing and frosting

Disposable
There are several single use plastic piping bags available on the market. They are very convenient and easy to use and are discarded after use avoiding messy washing up. Particularly good for catering purposes where hygiene and speed of use are the most important considerations. The Wilton brand have a very good strong bag in various sizes, these come in 12/24/50 and 100 pack sizes. Another good strong bag is the ‘Hygo’ bag. These come in either a clear smooth or blue textured plastic and are sold in rolls of 100.

Re-usable
There are a large range of re-usable bags on the market made of a variety of materials and can be very reasonably priced or quite expensive. Basically you get what you pay for, the cheaper ones tend to be less hardwearing and more likely to break at the seams. The more expensive ones will be made of a higher quality material and may be coated in polyester to prevent grease from seeping through. The issue with re-usable bags is keeping them clean and fresh and those with stitched seams can be particularly problematic. A better quality bag will likely have a reinforced seam and can be washed in the dishwasher, boiled or sterilised.

Greaseproof Bag
If you don’t have any readymade bags you can make yourself a bag using a square of greaseproof paper. Fold in half diagonally to make a triangle, fold the triangle again, then undo the second fold and form a cone shape, with a sharp point, by following the line of the centre fold with the sides of the triangle. Then just cut a small hole for the tip. Greaseproof is not the best material for butter icing as it is not very flexible, but does very nicely for glacé and royal icing.

Different sizes
Disposable and re-usable bags come in a variety of sizes. They are usually measured from the middle of the top of the bag to the pointed end. It is best to use a small bag, between 8-12 inches for intricate designs as they are easier to hold and move around. This size is also better if you need to decorate one handed. A 12 inch bag holds about 100-120g of butter icing. We use this size in our workshops for butter icing, as it suits the smaller tips and each bag is enough to decorate about 3 cakes depending on how generous you are with the icing. This is also a good size bag for decorating cakes with the kids. A 16-21 inch bag is better for large swirl butter icing designs and would hold enough to decorate between 12 – 20 cakes. A bag bigger than this would be difficult to use, due to the weight of the mixture.

First thing to remember is… Please don’t buy ready made cake mix… Making your own cake mix from fresh and premium ingredients can be fun and that is what will get you that “wow!” factor at a party or with your family, rather than the “oh!” factor.

I’ll assume you are intending to make 12 cupcakes, the following quantities makes a generous set of cupcakes but it will of course depend on how much you fill the cases. It is worth at this time considering how you want to decorate them. If for instance you want to use glace icing (runny at first and sets hard) then 1/3 fill the cases, this will leave a little room at the top for the icing to run to the sides and form a flat surface (more about glace icing in another blog).

If however your preference is for more cake then fill them 2/3’s of the way to the top. Experimentation here is essential; also consistently filling all your cases needs practice. A good tip to help you is to fill a large piping bag with the cake mix to fill your cases with, instead of the spooning in method. This helps avoid spillage over the sides of the cases and is much quicker and easier.

Most people have some reason why they use specific ingredients, here at Cupcake Passion we are no different, we use high quality ingredients for our cake mix all the time and we think you will notice the difference. We use Stork. No longer called margarine! We always use Free Range eggs.

Now the secret ingredient, McDougall’s Supreme Sponge Flour is in our opinion a consistently excellent flour, it’s heat treated and whether this makes the difference I do not know, I do however notice that the cake is definitely lighter and once you’ve made loads of cupcakes and tried loads of other flours you’ll notice the difference as well. We have no preference for Caster Sugar so any supermarket one will do, though you often get what you pay for so high quality counts here as well.

Now for the mix, take 3 medium sized free range eggs and weigh them in their shells, then measure exactly the same weight out for each of the following ingredients, Margarine, Caster Sugar & Flour. You may also like to add flavouring to the mix, such as zest of lemon or orange. Liquid flavouring is an alternative, these are available from any supermarket, the Sainsbury’s liquid extract flavourings are very good. Use 1½ teaspoons of liquid flavouring for 12 cakes. If you are making a chocolate cake mix then use Cocoa powder, we prefer Bournville Cocoa powder, (generally available at the coffee section of a super market) but you must also reduce the amount of flour you put in. So for example replace slightly less than 1/4 weight of flour with the same weight of Cocoa powder.

Mix the margarine and caster sugar using an electric mixer. Use a slow speed until the mixture is creamy in consistency. Beat the eggs separately; add to the mixture gradually. increase the speed of the mixer. Beat the mixture for several minutes until it becomes lighter in colour and texture. If you haven’t got a mixer you can still create great cakes with a lot of elbow grease, but a mixer will help you achieve a better result. Sieve the flour into the mixture, this will help to incorporate more air and make your cakes lighter. Use the slowest speed to mix the flour into the mixture and only mix for the shortest amount of time until the flour is absorbed. Over mixing can cause a hard finish to the top of the cake. Some mixers have a special flour mixing function, which pauses the mixer if it is left on too long. This is ideal.

The cakes should be cooked for 15 minutes, at approximately 170 degrees. If your cakes cook too quickly, reduce the temperature of the oven rather than reduce the cooking time. Oven temperatures can vary greatly and unless you have an oven thermometer the baking time for your cakes can be a good indicator of how accurate your oven temperature is.

You can buy cupcake course decorating vouchers when you book for these course as presents for friend, family or just yourself! Just book for anyone of the courses and in the notes section on the booking form just say you want to send this as a gift for someone, we will then ask you to pay in full and email you a voucher for you to print. We will also send a voucher in normal post as well which will need to be brought with you at the time of the course.

Cupcake Decorating Gift Vouchers can be transferred between course dates, so if you give it to someone and they cannot make it on a specific day then they can change to another date. We do ask that you change the date no less than 2 days from the day of the course as we need to prepare staff and materials for you.

Well we’ve finished our first cupcake decorating course in Frenchay in Bristol and it was a fantastic event, really enjoyed by the Cupcake Passion team as well as the participants. The course ran from 10am till approx 1pm, but most of the people who were on the course stayed for a longer and were very welcome, we had the venue booked for the whole day so it was a very relaxed affar. The amount of washing up that the team had to do at the end was staggering but everyone coped really well. We intend to change the course structure for our next event and will be having more stock available and also running a course in the morning and in the afternoon.

The course itself covers fondant, gumpaste and butter icing techniques include two tone butter icing tips. We found some great red cupcake boxes, very xmas, and lots of our cutters for the fondant had a xmas feel to them so perfect for December.

You can book for our next event now