Sunday, 20 June 2010

Buttercream icing


HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!

As I’m a nice person or something I decided to make Ben some Spurs-themed cupcakes. And thankfully after working at a men’s magazine I have an address book full of Real Men I could email to double check that Tottenham’s colours are (sort of) white, blue and yellow.

The last time I tried to make buttercream icing it wasn’t great – I had to add a load of milk and it was so soft it was more like mousse. But whenever I make cupcakes I worry that they taste like Ryvita, so I decided to try again. I dug out my mum’s The Dairy Book Of House Management (1969) which, as a guide to life, has everything from rules to training your budgie to wheat wine (mmm delish), seemed like it would be able to talk me through combining sugar and butter. And guess what? IT DID.

You need:
4oz of unsalted, softened butter
8oz of icing sugar

As I also added food colouring (and after trying a bit some vanilla essence) so stuck in another tablespoon of sugar.

Put everything in a bowl and shove an electric whisk in there. At first everything looks a bit weird and lumpy, like it will never work:


But soon it’ll look like actual icing, which for someone like me is astounding. I found it easiest to spread the icing on the cupcakes with a knife and then artistically sculpt it into what I can only describe as a rustic style.

No comments:

Post a Comment