Cupcake Mania | Buttercream Frosting Recipe and Icing 101

There's really nothing much to be said on this post. I made this for a couple of close friends when we all met up at a new vacation home in the Poconos, that one of them had bought.

It was celebration time, so cupcakes were the perfect answer.

I baked over 3 dozen egg-less cupcakes. One batch of plain vanilla, one of vanilla with chocolate chips and one of good ol' chocolate. I then made blue, white and brown buttercream frosting and decorated them.

Here's the super simple recipe to the best and most popular frosting on this planet!

Buttercream Frosting Recipe


Ingredients
1 Cup Unsalted Butter/Vegetable Shortening, at room temperature
4 Cups Confectioner's Sugar, sifted
1 tsp. Vanilla Essence (Or any other flavour that you want to use, like almond, pineapple etc.)
2 - 4 tbsp milk (Or more depending on the consistency of icing you want in the end)

Other
Icing Colours (optional; as desired)
Electric Hand Mixer (Using a whisk would just take you much, much longer)

Icing Notes

1. Using Vegetable Shortening in place of butter will ensure you have pure white buttercream frosting

2. In order to make dark brown/chocolate colored frosting you will need to substitute one cup of sugar with cocoa powder. If it turns out too thin, add more sugar since sugar stiffens icing.

Method
- Place vegetable shortening/ unsalted butter and vanilla essence in a large bowl
- Add sugar about half cup at a time and mix using the hand mixer/whisk until all the sugar is well blended
- Add milk, one teaspoonful at a time to thin the icing to desired texture and mix well
- At this point the buttercream frosting is ready and you can colour it with desired icing colours

Icing Texture Guide
a) Very Stiff/Minimal Milk usage -This type of icing takes effort to spread because of its extreme thickness. It is best for icing flowers and decorations that need to hold their shape
b) Medium Consistency - This type of icing spreads when pressure is applied but still holds shape. It is best for cake borders and icing patterns
c) Thin Consistency - This type of icing spreads very easily and is perfect to cover cakes

Adding Colour to Icing
- Icing colour comes in the form of gel. If you plan on using liquid food colouring, remember that the liquid can thin out the consistency of your buttercream icing.

- Use toothpicks to pick colour from the icing gel tub and then dip into the buttercream icing. Mix in the colour using a rubber spatula.

- If you need to add more colour, always use a new toothpick to pick the icing colour gel

I hope you found all this information helpful. I am no professional at this stuff, but all this is based on what I've read, learnt and experimented with.

And, to end this post I'd like to share a picture that I personally love the most, even with some flaws in the frosting/frosting technique.

Drool on!

Desi Style Savory Whole Wheat Onion Cheddar Muffins

Another one of my original baking experiments that turned out great and ....I can already see the faces light up! I know I've bored you savory food lovers enough with all my cakes and sweet muffins. So, this time I've given you mirch-masala people something to drool about - and, that too, from the oven! Literally killed two birds in one shot here.

To make things better, I've added Indian spices to give these muffins a desi feel without losing out on the wonderful combination of onion and cheddar cheese.

Do you need more reason to try this one? Ok, here's one. Having this bake in your oven makes your home smell like you've made freshly baked bread. Not heard of anyone who loathes this one, eh?

Sugar Glazed Banana Walnut Muffins

I hate to waste food. It is of course not something anybody would like doing. Especially when it comes to fruit, I hate to see myself throw away rotten fruit when I know I could have eaten it in the raw - What more can a lazy person ask for? No cutting, no chopping. Just wash and eat. Well, so much for natures such gifts, we always end up in situations where we have foods reaching the peak of their flavour and sometimes we just don't know what to do with the same. This happens most of the time, in our house, with bananas. We eat a couple, then they go over-ripe and then into the garbage pail. But, this slowly changed ever since I discovered the recipe for Banana Bread over a couple years ago. Not that I'd bake this every time we had over-ripe bananas, but its just such a wonderful way to use up fruit than to throw it away.

This time around I decided to twist the Banana Bread recipe to the muffin version. I even decided on adding walnuts since they perfectly compliment banana muffins. And, of course I topped it all off with a sugar glaze. One bite into this fella and you know you ain't sharing him with anybody!

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

Summer's is slowly winding down. Although the humidity has'nt given up, if you take a hard look at the trees outside you cannot miss the random yellow or orange leaf, hushing in autumn. And that, my pal, is enough excuse for me to not turn off the oven!! When you get hooked to baking, this is what happens. All you need is an excuse. Tee hee.

Weather is just one of the umpteen number of factors (read excuses) that automatically make my hand clasp the whisk and the oven mitts. These days it's my toddler! He's begun enjoying muffins after having eaten them at his playschool. Thank God for that...and that too right in time when I bought my new muffin pan, which I inaugurated by baking a batch of Carrot Muffins. This time around I decided I will pack in a punch of anti-oxidant rich blueberries.

The very idea of feeding him something as wholesome as a muffin that's home-made, with whole wheat and fruit, every morning with a cool glass of milk or juice for his breakfast has totally captured me. And, I am sure it sounds interesting to you too, does'nt it?

Oh, and I simply had to throw in those dainty, red raspberries for the picture. They're so photogenic, I tell you...they livened up the frame almost instantly!

Super-soft Low-fat Eggless Whole Wheat Carrot Muffins

Over time, baking (to me) has become both an obsession and therapy. I bake when I am happy. I bake when I am sad. And, sometimes (almost all the time, really) there needs to be no excuse for me to bake. Just the joy of having the wafts of something miraculous happening in my oven gives me a high that I would think no drink could! But, this time around I did have an excuse to bake. I bought a new muffin pan (and why do I feel like a kid confessing he/she secretly bought a new toy? Haha!). Just as you guessed, it did not end at that. I had to use it the very same day...and that's exactly what I did.

These muffins to me are very special. (Bahahaha! I know you're like say something new..who does'nt like muffins?!) Well, I have a solid reason this time around. I've always wanted to master baking. I know I am still thousands of miles away from it, but I sure want to get there - and what a delicious run it is indeed! After I started blogging and associating with so many people who really push the limits to how much you can do, my food-adventurous-side really got all fired up! Everytime I baked (until yesterday), I would take a look at some recipe online at least to make sure I knew my measurements right. But, these muffins happen to be my very FIRST experiment with baking where I have not taken a single peek at anything - online or otherwise. I had my heart in my hand as the oven did its work, and boy, was I happy at the end of it all!!

Now, with all that said, I would be a really stupid person if I do not give credit to Madhuri for having introduced me to just how delicious baked goods can be without eggs. Thanks babe! In this recipe, I've used flax seeds to replace eggs. I still remember discussing the goodness of these seeds with another friend of mine who suggested I could even add them to making chapathis etc. My instant response was, "Chapathis? No WAY! I do not want to waste them like that when you can bake with them!" *devilish grin*. And if you've been an avid follower of SSTT you'd have noticed the Microwave Chocolate Cake (Thanks to Madhuri, all over again!) I had mentioned that I was going to experiment on it. I did just that. I traded the all-purpose flour for whole wheat to keep things as healthy as I could. Also, this time I did not use the microwave and the results with the regular oven, as you can see, were fantastic, too!

I bought the muffin pan yesterday, baked these yesterday, clicked the pics today and posted it out here too! That should tell you just how excited I am about baking. LOL! Okay, let me stop jabbering and give you the recipe, NOW!

Ingredients

3/4 cup Whole Wheat flour
3/4 cup brown sugar (tightly packed)
A pinch of Salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp Vanilla extract
3 tsp roasted and fine-ground flax seeds mixed in 1/2 cup warm water (Or two eggs. If you opt to use eggs increase the quantity of the whole wheat flour by a fourth of a cup i.e. 1 cup)
Between 1/3 - 1/2 cup Whole Milk
Between 1/3 - 1/2 cup Cooking Oil (I've used Sunflower)
1/2 Cup grated carrots

Method
- Preheat oven to 350F
- Spray/Oil muffin pan and set aside
- Sift the whole wheat flour into a large bowl
- Add brown sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda and stir well
- Toss in the vanilla extract, oil and whole milk and mix well. This batter will be very thick
- Now, give a slight stir to the flax seeds in the warm water and add them to this batter
- Add grated carrots
- Whisk for about 5 minutes
- Line prepared muffin pan with paper baking cups and pour batter into each, upto about 3/4th of the cup. (I have used a pan that has a 1 3/4 inch (4.5cm) base diameter)
- Bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes off clean out of the center of a muffin
- Cool completely and serve

Makes 12 'I-want-one-NOW' muffins.

Go ahead and bake them in dozens...then stock 'em up in your fridge. Warm them up for a couple seconds in the morning and you will no excuse to skip breakfast ever again!