Usually I like to find a collection of little things at the end of my week that makes me feel happy or inspires me, but this week all it took was one. That one thing was discovering the reason my icing was consistently melting off my cupcakes (or turning into a gooey pool of sugar-ooze): it was because my little hand-mixer was fooling me. Usually I’d mix my icing as much as possible, until the mixer couldn’t spin anymore–I thought this meant the icing was firm enough. Not so, fellow cupcake fiends, not so.
It turns out that my mixer leaves a little (a lot) to be desired in the torque department. Really, wouldn’t you just assume that a power mixer that comes with a whisk attachment would be made for making icing? I know I did… oops.
In the end, it took a lot more elbow grease than I was anticipating, but I beat the rest of the confectioners’ sugar by hand into the icing, and it eventually worked. Ahh, the good ol’ fashioned way. No wonder my grandma’s homemade pies always taste better when she makes them. Anyway, I’m so happy about this discovery that I want to say hallelujah right now, but I already said it once this week and I feel like twice might be a bit much.
If you were wondering, I made these cupcakes from a basic vanilla cupcake recipe, and split the batter (like you see here, except I didn’t bake the layers separately) to dye it two different colours. Since now not one but two of my friends are visiting from Australia, I decided to do my best with the Aussie colours (of the flag. I’ll try for their green and gold another day) to welcome both of my friends back to Canada. You know, make ‘em feel at home in the wintery weather of the Northern Hemisphere. Brrr!
I was definitely intimidated by this layered cupcake task, but I assure you it’s actually incredibly easy. In fact, I sat at my kitchen table in awe for a good 5 minutes thinking “These look amazing. Did I actually make them?”. The simplicity of it all, combined with my new keeps-its-shape-and-doesn’t-run-off icing, made for some pretty darn cute cupcakes, and a very, very content me. Add a few sprinkles and candy balls, and I’m on cupcake cloud nine. Now I just have to not dump the carry-containers upside down on my way up to Whistler this weekend. Come on, baking industry, why don’t you invent cupcake carry-cases? I mean hello, who doesn’t take cupcakes to the mountains every weekend?
