My first time icing cupcakes.

So, my icing nozzles arrived today so I thought I'd give them a whirl! I have iced once using an icing bag on a gingerbread house for Christmas last year, but it came out more of a bold line of icing along the edges than anything else.

First of all I whipped up some cake batter.




Here they are just out of the oven.



After waiting for them to cool, I used the frosting recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook which I received for Christmas. I've done quite a few recipes out of there including the Apple Pie and Mississippi Mud Pie which were lovely. I decided on some vanilla frosting - 80g of unsalted butter at room temp, mixed with 250g of icing sugar with some vanilla extract and between 10ml-25ml of milk. I had to add a little extra icing sugar to get mine to the right consistancy so be careful when adding the milk.

After filling my icing bag, I went for it. I started anticlockwise and let the icing flow round. Here's my first attempt!


I went a little bit wobbly on the inside ring but not bad, I think!

My second time was a little steadier and I forgot to take a photo before I put sprinkles on.



I tried a couple of the other nozzles I had received, but mostly stuck to the the first one as I think I liked it the best. I made a simple butterfly cake as well, just to see what the nozzle would produce like and it was a little neater than 'dump a spoonful on' method. I also added some Green and Blacks cocoa to the frosting mixture to make some chocolate icing.








The vanilla one was used what was described as a "leaf" nozzle, I liked the effect. The chocolate one completely failed so I just smoothed it over with a knife and topped with some sprinkles.



I think it went okay for my first attempt and I intend to try again some time next week!