Cookie Dough Frosting

It's been FOREVER since I've posted! We've been super busy with friends, baseball, illness (everyone's taken their turn being sick), tonsillectomies (sweet Andrew had to get his tonsils taken out) and Andrew had a birthday!! I had a shocking wake up call as to exactly how old Andrew is getting when he had his birthday sleepover; there's something about 8 crazy hormonal boys that makes me want to lock my son up and home school him for the rest of his life! Here are some quotes from the night...
Boy 1- I want to spit all the jalapeno taste out into my hand
Boy 2- Dude, did you spit in your hand before you touched my face?
Boy 1- No
Boy 2- Good, I’d have to rip my cheek off!

Boy 1- We should find Andrew a girlfriend for his birthday!
Boy 2- First rule to getting a girlfriend... find a girl whose name you know and make sure she knows your name!

Boy 1- if Angelina Jolie was a Greek God she would be Aphrodite
Boy 2- I have a bone and arrow for her!

Boy 1- Has your girlfriend texted back?
Boy 2- No, my phone is on vibrate. Once when it was on vibrate I put it next to my crotch while I was playing Medal of Honor and when my girlfriend texted it was like OHHH HEEEE!

Asian Boy 1- Let’s prank call someone, I can do a really good Chinese accent!

It was a crazy night! So anyways, it's been almost a month since I've made anything new... that's pretty sad! This frosting is the perfect recipe though, it's worth waiting a month for! It's basically cookie dough without the eggs. You can pipe it onto cake (it makes a great double layer cake filling) or spread it onto brownies! Or you can eat it plain like my boys ,-)

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
1 cup chocolate chips

Directions
Mix the butter, sugars, salt, and milk together. Mix in the flour until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips. Spread on top of cooled brownies. Keep any left overs in the refrigerator.

Chocolate Fudge Frosting

I've had a lot of recipe duds lately... don't worry this is the first one I've posted! One recipe I thought up myself was DISASTROUS ... I had to put the cake into a bowl because it kept slipping off the cake stand, a total catastrophe! My game is cooking and I'm on a losing streak, it's disappointing :-(
I got this frosting recipe from Allrecipes and I was really hoping it would be an amazing frosting but it was just so-so, not bad, just mediocre. I actually prefer Duncan-Hines's milk chocolate frosting to this recipe. This frosting had a cooked flavor and the outside quickly got a crunchy film. It just wasn't my favorite, I am going to keep looking for the perfect chocolate frosting. Do you have a good recipe you would suggest?

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
3 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate (I used Bakers)
1 pound powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup milk

Directions
Melt chocolate and butter in the microwave, or in the top of a double boiler. In a large bowl, combine confectioners' sugar, vanilla and 1/2 cup of the milk. Blend in the melted chocolate mixture. Add remaining milk, a little at a time, until desired consistency is achieved.

Buttercream Frosting

I've been searching for the perfect frosting for awhile now. Easy Buttercream is great but it's rich, you can't pile loads of it onto cakes. It also gets hard when you put it in the fridge just like my favorite Swiss Buttercream frosting. I love Swiss Meringue on cakes (Andre's Chocolate Torte is the kind of cake people die over) but it's not that fluffy subtly sweet frosting I've had a hankering for. So one day I was blog surfing and came across this Why Pudding post where a professional baker goes on and on about how using instant pudding in her frosting has rocked her world, so I gave it a try... WOW. It's fluffy but not whipped cream fluffy, more silky and rich. It needs to be refrigerated (due to the cream) but the frosting stays soft even when refrigerated! This is my new favorite frosting! I've never tasted anything like it before but it is fabulous!! You have to give it a try!

My mom gave me a new frosting tip for Christmas it's an Ateco 849, and it's humongous! It's actually called a "pastry tube". I used it to frost these cupcakes using my favorite periwinkle color... thanks mom! Ingredients
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 stick salted butter, room temperature
1 box (3.4 oz) white chocolate instant pudding mix (you could sub a different flavor if you want)
1/2-3/4 cup heavy cream (depending on how thick you want your frosting)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (or more to suit your tastes) powdered sugar

Directions
In mixer set on medium speed, beat the butter until smooth and silky. Turn the speed to low and add the pudding mix, when it is all incorporated, slowly add the cream, a little at a time. When fully incorporated bring speed up to high and beat for 5-7 minutes (the long mixing time is to beat the grit from the pudding out). Turn speed back down to low and add powdered sugar tasting along the way. When it is sweet to your taste, beat again at high speed for a good 5 minutes to really break down any graininess that you might get from the powdered sugar. Add the vanilla and bring back down to low speed and beat for a while that way to get rid of air bubbles.

Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

Today was the last day of school and the boys each had their winter parties! I had this grand idea of making snow cupcakes with royal icing snowflakes, sparkling sugar, and white nonpareils... well the royal icing snowflakes were a disaster! I couldn't draw pretty snowflakes and when the snowflakes dried I couldn't pick them up off the waxed paper like I imagined (perhaps melted white chocolate would have worked better). So in the end I just had my sparkling sugar and nonpareils, they look a little more like wedding cupcakes than snowy winter cupcakes but the kids liked them all the same! Ingredients
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4-5 cups powdered sugar

Directions
Using an electric mixer, beat the butter at medium speed until creamy. Add the cream cheese and beat until combined. Then add the vanilla extract and 3 cups of powdered sugar and beat at low speed, occasionally stopping to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl, until light and fluffy. Add more powdered sugar to arrive at the consistency and sweetness you like. I put my frosting into a pastry bag and used a Wilton 1M tip to frost my cupcakes.

**Sprinkles Tip- Sprinkle cupcakes (or cookies) over a paper plate, make sure you use a different paper plate for each type of sprinkle. Then when you're done you can fold the paper plate and pour the leftover sprinkles back into the sprinkles jar to use again!

Wilton Icing and a Cupcake Bouquet

I never know what to do for Mother's Day! I wanted to do something special but I needed it to be reasonably priced. When I made the prom cupcakes a couple weeks back I got comments about them looking like flowers, so I thought I would try to make a cupcake bouquet. I needed a non-dairy frosting (since I wouldn't be able to refrigerate it) and it needed to be stiff enough so it wouldn't fall off the cupcake. I decided to try Wilton's Snow White Buttercream Frosting. The bouquet's turned out really cute, it was a great Mother's Day present... especially if you deliver it at your Mother's work with her adorable grand kids (bonus points are always given for feeding co-workers and showing off cute grand kids).

Frosting Ingredients
2/3 cup
1/4 cup Meringue Powder
12 cups sifted confectioners' sugar, (about 3 lbs.) divided
1 1/4 cups solid vegetable shortening
3 tablespoons light corn syrup (I omitted this)
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon no-color almond extract
3/4 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon no-color butter flavor

Frosting Directions
In large bowl, combine 2/3 cup water and meringue powder; whip with electric mixer at high speed until peaks form. Add 4 cups sugar, one cup at a time, beating at low speed after each addition. Add remaining 8 cups sugar, shortening and corn syrup in 3 additions, blending well after each. Add salt and flavorings; beat at low speed until smooth. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use. For best results, keep icing bowl in refrigerator when not in use. Refrigerated in an airtight container, this icing can be stored 2 weeks. Rewhip before using.

Bouquet Directions
First you will want to bake your cupcakes (make sure you use cupcake liners) I am obsessed with Pillsbury white cake mix, so I made white cupcakes but you could bake any kind of cupcake. I ended up using 24 cupcakes on each of my bouquet's. I got my planter pot and styrofoam ball from Hobby Lobby. I just set the ball on top of the pot. Starting on the bottom of the ball I stuck in 2 toothpicks and then pushed my cupcake onto the 2 toothpicks. I continued with the 2 toothpicks and cupcakes all the way along the bottom of the ball. Then I just worked my way up the ball putting the rest of the cupcakes in. I think it's cute even without the frosting. I used my Wilton 1M decorating tip to frost the cupcakes. I just start on the outside of the cupcake drawing a circle and working my way into the middle of the cupcake. Now, wouldn't it be great if I had pictures of me frosting the cupcakes? Well, I don't. Icing these cupcakes was... interesting. There was no time or patience for picture taking! I had to hold the planter high in the air so I could stand below and frost the bottom row. Once the bottom row was complete I just set the pot on the table and frosted the rest. The bottom row was the most challenging. I even messed up on a couple cupcakes and ended up pulling them off the toothpicks, scraping off the icing, and sticking them back on toothpicks to frost again. They really did turn out very well, and it actually looked like a bouquet of flowers! When I finished I was scared to death to transport them in the car to my Mother's work but I had each boy hold one of the pots and it worked great.

Dawn's Buttercream

I am a teacher at a High School and they asked if I would help make cupcakes for today's Prom, how exciting is that?! I absolutely love my job and I love the people I get to work with! Dawn, Mary, and I (the technology team) spent the entire day making cupcakes! We used Dawn's Buttercream recipe which uses almond extract, I've never had almond extract before but it was SO good in the frosting, not nutty at all, it was more like a citrus flavor! Click on the pictures to see a full screen version, in full screen you can really see the cupcakes sparkle!

Here's Dawn (she's a hoot) mixing her famous frosting. I ate so much of this icing I embarrassed myself!
Here I am piping the icing onto the cupcakes using my Wilton 1M tip, my favorite decorating tip to use on cupcakes!
Here's Mary (the nicest person I know) sprinkling edible glitter on each cupcake, the glitter really made these cupcakes look amazing! Mary called it her magic fairy dust and she had to refrain from making a "twinkle twinkle" noise every time she sprinkled it, hehe
Ingredients
1 cup shortening (Dawn uses Crisco)
1 pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons water or milk (Dawn used water so the frosting didn't have to be refrigerated)
2 tablespoons meringue powder

Directions
Cream shortening, water and flavoring. Add powdered sugar and meringue powder. Mix until blended. Add additional water until you reach the desired consistency. Stiff icing is good for some flowers, Dawn likes the soft consistency for icing cakes and a medium consistency was great for the cupcakes we made. If you want really white icing be sure to use a clear extract. If you use regular vanilla extract instead of the almond it makes the icing off white.

We had probably 8 boxes of cupcakes total. These 2 boxes showed each of our flavors though, chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry cupcakes with purple, white, and blue frosting.

Ganache Covered Peanut Butter Frosting

... the name is a work in progress, anyone have any better name ideas? I wanted to name this "Justin's Favorite Peanut Butter Frosting with Carrie's Favorite Ganache" but that seemed a bit long! One of my husband's co-workers said to him "your wife is trying to kill you", because by now you should realize that I make my hubby chocolate peanut butter treats almost every week. However, this peanut butter frosting is the best yet! Justin didn't like the cream cheese in Chocolate Peanut Butter Layer Cake and I didn't like the shortening in the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupakes (I don't like cooking with shortening or corn syrup... it makes me feel like a bad mom/wife)! This frosting was fluffy and yum-diddly-umptious! There was a little extra left over and Justin wouldn't let me throw it away, he wanted to save it to eat on a chocolate bar later (he's going to paddle me for sharing that)! I've used this ganache before and it's always perfect! When melted you can easily dip and pour but it stiffens up after an hour and has a nice glossy look!

Peanut Butter Frosting Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cup creamy peanut butter
2 1/2 cups confectioners/powered sugar
Ganache Ingredients
1 (12 ounce) bag chocolate chips
1/2 cup milk

Peanut Butter Frosting Directions
In a large mixing bowl mix together the butter, peanut butter, and powered sugar. When it's mixed well it's ready to pipe onto a chocolate cake or cupcakes. This made enough for me to frost 16 cupcakes.
Ganache Directions
In a tall cup or bowl (I use a 2-cup measuring cup) add the milk and chocolate chips. Microwave in 30 second intervals stirring after each cycle until it's melted. Mine is usually melted and ready to go after 3 cycles (1 minute 30 seconds).

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

I took cupcakes to work today to celebrate Dawn’s Birthday, woohoo happy 47th DT! I work very closely with Dawn and Mary… close enough that we’ve lost that “professional relationship” and we’ve become family. I get so comfortable that I often find myself saying something work related in my relaxing verbiage like “Dude, you should totally reformat that computer!” Dawn will look at me like… seriously Carrie, do you need to go catch some waves? Grow up and get to work! ...I can’t help it though, I am a child of the 90’s, I grew up on Bill and Ted and 3 Ninjas. When I put on my teacher big girl pants in the morning I make a conscious effort to suppress the “dudes” and “totally”! Ok, before I get started on my desire to wear Hypercolor again lets get to the frosting…

Swiss Meringue Buttercream is my favorite type of frosting! The difference between meringue buttercreams (there are several - Italian, Swiss, French - every European country thinks they know best, apparently,) and regular "American style" buttercream (what we think of as a more "crunchy" frosting) is this… American buttercream is just butter (sometimes a little cream cheese) and TONS of powdered sugar mixed together. The result is that intense, super sweet, sometimes a little gritty, frosting. I make a great one. Mmmm! Swiss Meringue Buttercream is made by dissolving a relatively small amount of granulated sugar into egg whites, whipping it into a meringue and then adding the butter. They're smoother, creamier and less over the top sweet. They also stand up better in heat, which is awesome for taking cakes/cupcakes to events. I don’t think the Swiss Meringue Buttercream is very good plain, the real magic happens when you add an additional flavor like lemon or chocolate (like I used in my birthday cake and chocolate torte)!

Base Ingredients
1 cup sugar
4 large egg whites
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Additional Flavor Ingredients
Lemon
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
Chocolate
1/4 cup Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder

I will add more flavor add-ins as I try them but I don’t want to list anything I haven’t tried for fear of ruining someone’s delicious dessert :( that would make me feel so guilty!

Directions
Place the sugar and egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer or another large heatproof bowl. Fit the bowl over a pan of simmering water and whisk/mix constantly until the sugar dissolves and the mixture feels hot to the touch, about 3 minutes. Remove the bowl from the heat.
Using an electric mixer, beat the mixture on medium speed until it has cooled, about 5 minutes. Add the butter, flavoring add-in, and vanilla (you may want to add the butter one stick at a time beating until smooth and adding another). Once all of the butter has been added, beat the buttercream on medium-high speed until it is thick and very smooth, 10-15 minutes. During this time, the buttercream may curdle or separate--just keep beating and it will come together again. The buttercream will be smooth and velvety. You will know it’s done when it stiffens up. You will notice the mixer beaters going through the icing and the icing will stay in the stiff peaks and not fall. I think the frosting tastes best when it's cold so I keep my cake/cupcakes in the fridge, it will keep for 3-5 days in the fridge as well! You will stand and mix for a long time, so put on your comfy shoes and just keep mixing it, it will eventually stiffen up and… dude, you will have a totally delicious frosting!

Easy Buttercream Frosting

My friend Colleen got married yesterday (congratulations Colleen and Mark!!) so today was the perfect opportunity to try out my new cupcake courier! I got it for Christmas and it is one of the greatest inventions ever! Seriously, I’ve always struggled to travel with cupcakes! I can remember carrying in Andrew’s cupcake birthday treats in 4 cereal boxes! The cupcake courier is just awesome, it held all 36 cupcakes perfectly! Next up I want to get a set of individual cupcake holders to send in the boys lunches, how cute would that be!
Don’t let my excitement for my cupcake courier distract you from this frosting. It is easily my favorite frosting and dangerously delicious! I made the frosting and iced the cupcakes last night but it was just as yummy today as it was yesterday unlike the disappointing Marshmallow Frosting (which was only good for a couple hours). The cupcakes were just Duncan Hines White Cake, and the cake and icing went perfectly together!

Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) butter (room temperature)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 pound powdered sugar
1-3 teaspoons milk

Directions
Using a mixer, cream softened butter and vanilla until smooth. Add sugar gradually, allowing butter and sugar to cream together before adding more. If you want your frosting a little creamier, add a teaspoon of milk at a time and beat on high until you get the right texture. Then, just use icing colors to tint the frosting the color of your choice. This is just enough for a 2-layer cake (or 24 cupcakes). I had to double it for my 36 cupcakes.

Marshmallow Frosting

**Update- It's probably the egg whites but this frosting was only good for the first couple hours, so I will not make this again unless I am serving it immediatly.
I love to bake but I wouldn’t consider myself a baker. I pass over any recipe that requires yeast, I always use boxed cake mix, and I refuse to make anything that takes longer than an hour. So it is always a challenge when I go looking for dessert recipes. I saw a recipe for Marshmallow Frosting/7-minute frosting that I couldn’t resist! You have to mix for a good 7-8 minutes but it was easy and SO delicious! It really did taste like fluffy marshmallow cream!

Ingredients
2 large egg whites
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2 tablespoons water
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Directions
Combine frosting ingredients with a pinch of salt in a metal/glass bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water and beat with a handheld electric mixer at high speed until frosting is thick and fluffy, 6 to 7 minutes. Remove bowl from heat and continue to beat until slightly cooled. Mound frosting on top of cake.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

I swear Justin has peanut butter running through his veins. If I want to make him happy all I have to do is buy a jar of peanut butter and M&Ms at the store. He will dip his M&Ms in the peanut butter jar all week long and be blissfully happy.

Ingredients
1 Pkg of devil's food cake (with the oil and eggs listed on the package)
1 Pkg instant chocolate pudding
2 1/2 cups powered sugar
4 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 cups marshmallow fluff
1 cup shortening
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons peanut butter

Directions
Make the devil’s food make according to the directions but add the package of instant pudding before mixing. Cook cupcakes and let cool.

Mix powdered sugar, milk, vanilla, and fluff together and then add shortening and peanut butter. I scooped the frosting into a pastry bag and cut the tip of the bag (I didn’t use a tip, I just cut the top off the bag) and frosted the cupcakes!