Very Vanilla Cupcakes With Vanilla Buttercream Roses

As-Salaamu Alaykum,

If you follow me on instagram you have already had a sneaky peak at these very vanilla cupcakes i baked for my twin sister.

The buttercream roses on each cupcake i promise you aren't as hard as they look, honestly! for me it's the easiest piping technique i have come across so far in my cake decorating ventures.

The rose is flowing with natural beauty and you don't have to worry about every rose being identical or symmetrical, for me that is what is so appealing about using this technique for decorating cupcakes or cake.

The next time you and your children are baking together be confident and give it a try, what's the worst that could happen? that you have to remove the buttercream and start again? Take 1 cupcake  use it to practice, keep piping, scraping off and piping some more until you are happy, then you can have the peace of mind that you are able to decorate the rest of the batch.

I would always recommend you use a 1M wilton icing tip for this, other closed star tips are said to work too but i have never tried anything else because of the fab results i get each time using the 1M.

The texture of buttercream should not be so stiff or you won't be able to pipe, on the other hand if your buttercream is too runny/wet then the design will dissapear.

The icing recipe below was enough for me to pipe buttercream roses on 18 cupcakes.

I adapted Nigella's vanilla cupcake recipe by firstly x2 all the ingredients, hoping i would make 24 cupcakes out of the batter when infact i got 18! I replaced the vanilla extract with 2 lots of seeds from 2 vanilla pods and baked them at 160C/140C (Fan) for 15minutes

Vanilla Buttercream Icing Recipe

Ingredients

150g  unsalted butter, softened/ room temperature

300g icing sugar, sieved

4-5tbsp milk

1 vanilla pod, seeds only

Method

1. Place butter and vanilla into a large bowl and beat for 30 seconds
2. Add icing sugar, starting Slowly!
3. Whilst beating the butter/sugar mixture, add Milk one tablespoon full at a time until the mixture just drops of the wooden spoon/beaters when lifted.
4. Fill a large piping bag fitted with a 1M tip with the buttercream. Pipe tight swirls starting from the centre.