or

"Hey, I can do that!"


Monday, July 5, 2010

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July!


Happy Birthday, America!  I got to try a couple new things here that I now love.  My guinea pigs were my husband's family that came over for some 4th of July festivities.

Stats:
  • Duncan Hines Golden Vanilla box cake mix
  • cream cheese icing
  • swirled with Ateco tip #845
  • topped with cherry and blueberry pie filling
Last weekend was the first time I saw "Golden Vanilla" in the cake isle at the grocery store.  I don't know what makes Golden Vanilla different than Duncan Hines' French Vanilla cake mix, but they taste pretty much the same.  Yellow cake + vanilla = yum.  Can't go wrong with that.


This was my first attempt to make cream cheese icing.  After some web browsing, I concluded most recipes are butter + cream cheese + powdered sugar.  Easy enough!  I beat 2 sticks of unsalted butter, 2 (8 oz.) packages of cream cheese, and some enough powdered sugar until I liked the taste and consistency.  It probably was close to 5-6 cups of sugar.  I had my husband taste it (since he's the one that loves cream cheese icing).  He suggested a bit of lemon.  I added a few drops of lemon juice and 2 drops of LorAnn's Princess Cake & Cookie emulsion.  It came out very yummy!


I ventured out to the cake supply store the other day and got some Ateco tips.  I've been wanting to try new shapes for topping cupcakes.  Here is tip #845.  It's a 7/16" closed star tube.  Notice how the metal curls.  I really enjoyed piping with this tip.  I piped clockwise from the outside in.


I only needed 1 pass to ice the entire top.  Usually with the 1M I do 2 passes to make it full and tall.  I'm not sure if it was because of the icing (which was very thick and rich) or the tip shape.  It was easy to make a nice end peak too.


Cakecentral.com recently had a post where the baker filled her cupcakes with pie filling and then topped them with cream cheese icing.  I went the lazy route and just put the filling on top.


These cuppies were extremely yummy!  Cream cheese icing has made my favorites list.  It was nice to pipe; it kept its edges nice and crisp.  The left overs were put in the fridge because the cream cheese would spoil.  The icing got firm, but it was still easy to bite in to.  I'm curious to how it would be like to frost a whole cake with this stuff.


Hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday!

1 comment:

  1. My, don't those look delicious! Your cream cheese frosting came out so smooth. If you didn't say it I would really think you bought those at a store. Good job! I think I'm going to bake me up a batch of cupcakes, these pics made me hungry!

    ReplyDelete

As Seen On

As Seen On Capital Confectioners