Hello, Cupcake Challenge

So, the challenge this month for Hello, Cupcake! club is to make cupcake pictograms for your sweetie for Valentines day. So I made the one above. It isn’t the best quality, but give me some credit, it was my first time piping anything! I think I did pretty well for being the first time. Oh, and by the way, my pictogram says “can’t be measured,” get it? A can, a bee and a measure stick? I thought it was pretty clever!

Anyhow, these are just simple white cupcakes, standard recipe. I used the one from the book Hello, Cupcake! It is as follows:

Ingredients

Makes 2 dozen

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 standard 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake liners; set aside.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside. Combine milk, oil, and vanilla in a small bowl; set aside.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with t he paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture, alternating with milk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture; beat until well combined, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary.
4. Fill muffin cups two-thirds full with batter. T ransfer muffin tins to oven and bake until golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer cupcakes to a wire rack; let cool completely before decorating.

The frosting is the 7-minute frosting from the s

ame book, and the recipe is as follows:

• 2 large egg whites
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (i used lemon juice because I don’t have cream of tartar)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Bring 1 inch of water to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Combine the egg whites, sugar, corn syrup, water and cream of tartar (lemon juice) in a large bowl. Make sure it is a glass or metal bowl. Set the bowl over the simmering water, making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the w ater.
2. With an electric mixer (BE CAREFUL!) on high speed, beat the mixture, still over the simmering water, until thick and fluffy, about 7 minutes. Beat in the vanilla extract. Server the day it is made as it becomes gr anular if it sits.

I changed it up a bit though, instead of waiting the full 7 minutes for it to get fluffy, I stopped once it got sticky and shiny! I then dipped the cupcake tops into the bowl to make a very nice clean coat. I did this for several reasons: my son was throwing a fit, so I had to hold him, and ice cupcakes with one hand; My ar

m was tired of holding the mixer; and finally, it’s pretty!!

So i dipped each cupcake in the pretty shiny ici

ng and let them sit. Meanwhile, I found some clipart online of a can, a bee and a ruler (though I didn’t really need it :)) I then made some meringue frosting (royal icing). I split it into separate bowls and made a grey, a yellow and a blue. I put the printed clipart under some wax paper, and piped the outlines and c

olored them in. I used just a zip lock bag for this, with a small hole.

It’s really very simple, there just a lot of steps, and a lot of clean up!

These are made the same way. For the green I took the left over 7 minute frosting and tinted it green, put it in my Wilton desert decorator with the round tip, and went to town making whatever design I felt like.

These are a lot of fun to make, and they taste good too! The frosting taste like marshmallows! Yum!

Hope you enjoyed the latest chapter of my cupcake exploration, I’ve really enjoyed learning and playing with icing.