The Crocheted Cupcake: buttercream

Monday, June 18, 2012

Lemon Buttercream

Hello all! Last week I made cookies and cupcakes for my mom to take to work for a fundraiser. I made half lemon and have vanilla, and they are delicious! It is really easy to adapt a basic buttercream recipe to create different flavors. Using this basic recipe from Wilton, you can be creative and have delicious tasting cupcakes all the time!

Ingredients:

· ½ cup butter, softened (one stick)

· ½ cup shortening (Crisco)

· 1 teaspoon lemon extract (or any other extract: vanilla, raspberry, almond…)

· 4 cups confectioners sugar

· 2 teaspoons milk (**you may need a little more or less depending on weather & humidity)

Directions:

1. First cream the butter and shortening together. Then add the extract (in my case, I did a vanilla recipe and then a lemon recipe).

2. Slowly add the confectioner’s sugar, making sure not to create a catastrophic poof of sugar all over the kitchen!

3. Add milk, slowly. The glory of this is that you can add more or less in order to get the right consistency for your recipe.

Be creative and try different extracts for different flavored cupcakes! It’s great to use a plain vanilla cupcake, add a little filling, and then complement the flavor with a flavored buttercream. For instance, raspberry filled vanilla cupcakes with lemon frosting, yum!

I added a little royal icing flower to differentiate between the vanilla and lemon cupcakes (along with the frosting color).

Tracy's Birthday Cake!

This cake wasn't as time consuming to decorate as you may think. I used 5 different bags of buttercream for each star tip color and just went around and added each color. It was fun!