Cupcake Decorating

My Wild Sugar Rose cupcakes...

I went to a fabulous class this morning at Wild Sugar Rose to learn how to decorate cupcakes with "Stunning Swirls."  I think I may have been the Ed Support kid of the group as I seemed to struggle with wielding an icing bag, not to mention my stuff up using the coffee machine, ah hem.

I even learned to make the little molded purple rose...eeek!

The classes are run by Meredith who makes it all look easy and has a great set up in her studio.  I feel the $95 class fee was money well spent as I now know how to ice five different ways and do some simple molding with gum paste/fondant icing.  You also take home a beautiful box of 6 cupcakes hand decorated by yourself.  The class ran for three hours and went by in a very enjoyable flash.  If you go take an extra $20-30 as you will want to purchase some the ingredients and equipment.  The green iced cakes are some of the cakes I made at class.  My auntie and my eldest daughter came along and we all enjoyed it immensely and left with a feeling of accomplishment and pride.

Cupcake masterpiece by Lily...

I would love to go to college classes and do cake decorating and learn how to apply smooth icing and make sugar roses.  I think that might fall into next year's New Year's resolutions as this year is jam packed and fast running out.

Made by my child genius...

Beauty and the nerd...

I came home all inspired and Lily and I set to work.  Can I say with no hint of parental pride...the child has talent!  Cupcake talent.  We knocked up a double batch of frosting and cakes and used some of the fondant left over from her birthday cake to make our own creations.  I was really just the kitchen lacky shuttling cakes across the bench and refilling her piping bag.

I used my trusty ole' Kitchen Aid stand mixer for the cupcakes but can see no real difference in the outcome when I throw all the ingredients into Thermie for 40 secs on speed 4/5.  However, I tried to make the professional butter-cream frosting in Thermie and it wasn't the best - I swapped to ole' trusty with better results.  So, cake batter in Thermie, frosting in KA.

I used a modified cupcake recipe of my own.  Preheat your oven to 180c and lines to cupcake trays with cupcake papers.

Do this in Thermie;

230g soft unsalted butter (room temp)
230g raw organic sugar
230g sr flour
4 free range eggs - room temp
2 tsp vanilla bean paste
1 pinch of salt (if you're posh use Tahitian Vanilla Salt that you bought in Melbourne)
1 Tblsp of milk (I use hi-lo)

Weigh in sugar and mill for 3 seconds on Speed 10. If you were using a vanilla pod you could scrape in the seeds and mill with the sugar.
Weigh in/ add all other ingredients.
Mix on Speed 4/5 for 40 seconds.

Place tablespoons of mixture into paper cases - this makes about 20.

Bake for 15-20 minutes on 180c depending on your oven.

Cool before decorating.  These don't rise much - they are perfect for decorating, you don't want humps people, not even lovely lady humps!

Yours in sticky delights,
ThermoMINX