How to Make Pretty Swirly Cupcake Icing
I called my aunt today to find out what she needed me to bring to her Easter party and egg hunt Saturday. She asked if I could bring dessert and I happily obliged. I mean, dessert is kinda my thang, right? Right. I immediately decided I would take cupcakes since I had already spent all day yesterday making iced sugar cookies and I was kinda done with those.
My brain started rolling trying to think of something cute to do since it was Easter after all, but unless I wanted to take a trip “down the hill” to Michaels for supplies, I didn’t have a lot to work with. I always have stuff for cupcakes, I just didn’t have extra cutsie things to make them special.
Then, I remembered I had a great tub of Easter sprinkles so I just decided to pretty them up with frosting. I mean, frosting is pretty on it’s own…but it’s even more fabulous when it’s all swirly!
Here is how I did it.
Doesn’t it just look like it’s waiting for you to dig in with a spoon? Kinda like a pink milkshake. Of frosting.
I decided on pink and green for my colors and whipped up my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe. I split the frosting into two bowls and colored them each with wilton gel colors, carnation pink and leaf green.
I found it’s so easy to fill the pastry/icing/piping (what the hell are these called again?) bag when I fold it over a cup. I can’t tell you how many times I tried filling directly into the bag only to get frosting everywhere! Folding half of the bag out over a cup really makes it a lot easier and less messy.
I filled one bag with green and one bag with pink. These two bags I simply snipped the end off leaving the big star tip (1M) for the main outside bag. Looking back, it would have been easier to squeeze had I used smaller inside bags instead of 3 like sized bags. Regular baggies would have worked just fine for the inside bags, too.
I put both colored bags inside the outside, tipped bag and squeezed the frosting down into the tip. Here is where it would have been better to have smaller bags on the inside. It was a little bulky to hold and squeeze (hhmmm…dirty mind has heard that before….).
See how pretty the frosting comes out together?? I was just giddy with my results!
You can thank Cheryl for this tutorial. I mean, I took the pictures, I probably would have posted it…eventually…but she just had to know RIGHT.NOW. how I did it. So now you know. Go forth and impress your friends.
Happy Easter.
Check Out Anthony Cooks!
Anthony is such a little Foodie. He LOVES to eat, he LOVES to try new food and he LOVES to be in the kitchen. So I have been playing with the idea for a while of creating him a little section here for him to post about recipes and such. Well, this week I did it.
OH My Goodness!!
He is a little MONSTER! He is so opinionated and he had a clear vision of what he wanted “his own website” to look like. He helped me pick the layout, he told me what to do with his picture (like smooth out his dimples because it would “look better”), and then his head about exploded from excitement when my fabulous bloggy friends started commenting.
It was as he sat at his desk reading the comments to me that I realized this was going to be very very good for my homeschooling boy.
It is like pulling teeth to get him to read and spell. It’s torture and the activity I put off the most because it’s just more fun to do math and science with him. But listening to him be excited about reading his comments, and today helping him author his first post, my heart smiled.
So, if you have time, please check out Anthony Cooks. And if you have a few seconds more, please leave him a comment. He really loves to read them and I love to listen to him (willingly) read. I have links to the site in my sidebar and navigation menu (up top) so please check in often and follow along as we share our kitchen experiments with you.
Chocolate French Toast {Recipe}
mmmmmmmmmmmmm…I LOVE french toast. Like really, really love it. It’s probably my all time favorite breakfast food. It probably explains why my ass is so big. So when I stumbled into Sprinkle Bakes Chocolate French Toast recipe, I KNEW I would be trying it out.
Now, I had to modify it a little. For one, I didn’t have a big thick delicious loaf of Panera bread. I only had plane old Home Pride wheat sandwich bread. Such is life. And I also didn’t use quite as many chocolate chips that the recipe called for. Not because I didn’t want to…because who would ever want to use less chocolate chips? But, because I didn’t have a full bag like I thought I did…I guess someone ate more out of the bag than they thought they did. It was still plenty delicious.
Oh, I added strawberries, too.
Chocolate French Toast {modified (just a little) from Sprinkle Bakes}
1 loaf of your favorite bread (“Texas Toast” works really well on french toast because it’s very thick)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup hot water
6 large eggs (I added extra eggs because I needed to feed 5)
2 cup milk (SB recipe called for cream that I didn’t have. Milk worked just fine)
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
6oz. semisweet chocolate chips
bag of frozen organic strawberries, thawed
syrup (I used my homemade syrup)
butter
In a small bowl, dissolve cocoa powder in hot water. Whisk until blended; set aside.
In shallow square tupperware or baking dish, whisk together eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla and salt. Add chocolate cocoa mixture; whisk again until mixed.
Spray your non-stick pan with non-stick spray (overkill?) and heat over medium high heat. Dip bread pieces in egg mixture, turning once to make sure it’s completely coated and place in pan. Flip toast after about 2-3 minutes and cook other side until golden brown. Repeat process until all your bread is cooked, or you run out of egg mixture. I keep my cooked toast in the oven on warm while I finish cooking it all.
To serve, take 2 (or more) pieces of toast and stack them on a plate. Sprinkle a small handful of chocolate chips over the top, adding a few in between the pieces for good measure. Top with butter, syrup and strawberries. Whip cream would probably be really good, too but I didn’t have any this time.
Seriously…the best french toast I’ve ever had.
A Much Better Second Round!
I’m in love with beautiful decorated sugar cookies and have been hoping for an excuse to practice. My first attempt was a flop, but this round turned out MUCH better…dontcha think?
Bob’s friend Miquel helped trouble shoot my computer when it was being stupid last week and I was asked to make some cookies as a “thank you.” YAY cookies!
I don’t have good luck with sugar cookies, and they aren’t my favorite to eat. So I went searching for a chocolate cut out cookie and decided to try this recipe. It was fabulous! {even when I ran out of cocoa and had to use 1/4 cup extra flour…oops}. But this cookie rolled easily and didn’t end up as a dried crumbly mess.
I then thought…”wouldn’t it be yummy to make the normally non-delicious royal icing a peppermint flavor?”
Bob said “no.”
But what does he know?
So I ran to the store for more powdered sugar {I ran out…I never said I was an organized baker} and picked up some peppermint extract. I then used Sugarbelle’s “Top-Secret Royal Icing” recipe and replaced 2 TBS of water with 2 TBS of peppermint extract {I was making a double recipe}.
Peppermint royal icing, straight out of the bowl tasted a whole lot like toothpaste! I may or may not have freaked out a little.
Here, I was making these cookies for Bob to take to work, I had delicious chocolate sugar cookies, but I was going to decorate them with toothpaste. Just fabulous.
But I went ahead and decorated them and prayed for the best. I hoped that they just seemed strong on their own, but combined with the chocolate cookies that it would be good.
I spent hours decorating these stupid cookies. With toothpaste flavored icing.
Holy shit this better work.
My mom came over after dinner. I offered her the first cookie {you call it guinea pig…I call it being a good hostess and offering cookies to my guests}.
She liked them!
Thank goodness!! YAY!
I took my first bite, I’ll be darned if it didn’t taste really good.
*sigh*
What a relief. I wasn’t going to have to redo the entire process tomorrow.
I did learn a few things this round of decorating.
1st: Don’t put cute little dino-dots on your dinosaurs until after they have been flooded. I think that would have sped up my decorating time immensely. The butterfly’s, too. I put the spots and dots on, then flooded and I had to work slow to fill in all the irregular edges. So next time, I’ll flood first then add the details.
Well, maybe I only learned one thing. But it’s a good tip to remember.
Do you have any cookie websites that you like? I’m looking for more inspiration. This is too much fun!
Find Me!