Leftover Cake & Piping Tips

Have you ever been making a cake and had cake batter left over? Well instead of over filling your pans just make a little cake or a couple cupcakes! Over-filled cakes never have a happy ending.This will also help you with your leftover icing. This method will work a lot better than eating it by the spoon. Not that i do that though.... Well this Easter after i was making my cake (post soon to come just waiting on pictures to be delivered, i forgot to take pictures for you guys!) I had some left over frosting and cake batter so i made a little 6 inch cake and practiced my piping skills. Which by the way aren't that great, which is why i practice! The old saying Practice Makes Perfect really comes into play here because unless you have been born with awesome amazing piping skills, unfortunately  most of us aren't, practicing when ever you get the chance really helps. Here are some tips to help you if your having trouble:

1. Make sure your icing isn't too stiff, if it is it will really hurt your hand and make it hard to push out of the bag. Especially with smaller tips.
2. Every once and a while cool down you icing in the fridge because the heat from your hand will make it too thin and it won't hold it's shape.
3. Make sure your icing doesn't have any chunks in it, if there are make sure you have a toothpick near by to clean out the tip, whenever you feel it getting harder to get the icing out. If you don't clear the tip you run a high risk of exploding you bag. Ya it appended to me. Not good
4. If you find that  your icing is really airy with lots of air bubbles, take a spatula and calm down the icing by gently stirring and folding it till nice and smooth. This happens a lot with royal and butter cream icing I find.
5. Always make sure your tip is clean, this will keep your piping looking clean and sharp.

Simply Lemon Cupcakes

I just got back from a family vacation from Florida and it always boggles me with the difference in temperature from here in Canada to Florida. We were lucky enough to be able to rent a house that included or own pool and everything! It was absolutely a wonderful vacation. We also backed out onto a wonderful green space that had orange, lemon, and grapefruit trees! When I got home I was so inspired by the fresh citrus fruits in Florida that i decided to make a lemon flavoured cupcake to bring back some Florida to the chilly weather back here in Canada. Little did i know though that it was warm here too! How wonderful. I guess now my cupcakes are celebrating the weather we are having here instead!

I came across this lemon cupcake recipe on a great blog called My Baking Addiction. The cake sounded promising so i gave it a whirl but tried adding my own thing to it by using lemon juice instead of lemon extract. And my experiment failed they tasted great and looked great but they had a weird texture. The texture was kind of doughy and not cake like at all!  So instead of giving them to my fathers fire hall like I had planned me and my family ate them instead. My butter cream was amazing though. The lemon flavour was out of this world! I would maybe suggest making a white cake to go with it though since the frosting is so in your face.And that's just what i did with the leftover frosting. But hat I'll save for later

Because of my inspiration for these cupcakes was the warm weather i thought my decorating should capture that! So i used yellow muffin liners that i got at he dollar store and there were lot's of other colours too, DOLLAR STORE RULES! Any ways away form my obsession with the dollar store and back to decorations. I tinted the frosting a light yellow and added yellow sugar sprinkles and green and yellow (what were supposed to be) butterfly sprinkle... they look more like hearts. OH well still cute right? Here's my lemon butter cream but be warned its lemon flavour will be CRAZY! If you8r not that into lemon don't add as much lemon juice :) 

Simply Lemon Butter cream

1 cup softened butter
4 cups icing sugar
3/4 of a lemon
3 tbsp table cream or milk
yellow food colouring (optional)

Juice the lemon. Cream the butter till light and fluffy. Add half the sugar and combine. Beat in the cream and juice. Mix in the rest of the sugar. Then beat on high until fluffy.