The Icing on the cake..

Sunday 27 January 2013

I know it is January; diets, cutting back etc..

 but I wanted to start looking at the icing on the cake - literally!




I was icing a cake yesterday in a rush and decided to just pile on the butter cream into some 'Mr Whippy -eque' peaks of loveliness. I decorated these with white chocolate stars and was amazed that sometimes you don't need to be perfect and proud of your delicate iced creations.

My Mum also told me a story how on Friday in the supermarket a lady about my age stopped her and asked 'how do you make butter cream?' She then asked if it is  'butter and cream' which she had in her basket. She was decorating her son's birthday cake.

My Mum told her as she taught me, butter cream is butter whipped with icing sugar until the icing is white and forms soft peaks. The lady was so grateful to my Mother and my Mother was equally happy that her daughter was taught to goodness of icing! Thanks Mum for the lessons.

So as I was forming peaks of icing, I thought how I had iced in past using basic and easy icings.

The icing I used this weekend was a basic buttercream with cocoa folded in to give a speckled apperance/


The Humming Bird bakery has a lot to answer for as when baby was little, it was so easy to get a palette knife and smooth the icing over a sponge cake and decorate. The washing up was minimal and no bags or pipers to wash! I still use this technique of a little curl on top of my cakes and decorate with stars or cherries.

 To make the butter cream smoother I add glycerine and an essence which was it smooth and fluid and the extra liquid in the essence makes the spreading of the cream easier.

Do you have an icing which you love? Tell me the recipe! Happy icing...

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