WARNING: there is nothing healthy about this post. It was little C’s birthday party this past weekend, which meant lots of baking and frosting. In the past I have made gluten-free and vegan cupcakes, but since not everyone eats like we do I decided to bake traditional sweets (full of gluten and white sugar); the closest thing I got to being healthy was using coconut oil in the cake batter. I don’t know about you, but I think frosting can make or break a cake. Last year, thanks to Pinterest and my good friend Kate, I discovered this classic vanilla buttercream frosting recipe from savorysweetlife.com and now I use it for all of my frosting endeavors. It is AMAZING (think Sprinkles cupcakes amazing), easily frosts cakes and can be stiffened up with a little extra powdered sugar to deck your cupcakes. I have modified it for cream cheese frosting as well!
Ingredients:
- 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks or ½ pound), softened (but not melted!) Ideal texture should be like ice cream. For creamcheese frosting sub one stick butter for 8 oz. creamcheese
- 3-4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar, SIFTED
- ¼ teaspoon table salt
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- up to 4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream
How to do it:
- Beat butter for a few minutes with a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed.
- Add 3 cups of powdered sugar and turn your mixer on the lowest speed (so the sugar doesn’t blow everywhere) until the sugar has been incorporated with the butter.
- Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, salt, and 2 tablespoons of milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes.
- If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add remaining sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add remaining milk 1 tablespoons at a time.
I made both chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, and put an oreo in the bottom of the vanilla cupcakes before pouring in the batter. I also did a two-layer chocolate cake, with cream cheese frosting as the center and then iced it in buttercream. Talk about sugar overload!
Little C is obsessed with Minnie Mouse so I decorated her cupcakes as Minnie by using Oreos (thanks again to Pinterest), but I couldn’t find fondant for bows. I ended up using these adorable pink chocolate sixlets to make the bows which was totally easy and a hit with little C and her friends (they worked great on her cake as well).
Needless to say it was a very sweet birthday party. Tomorrow I will be posting pics from her party. We had some special guests come in honor of Little C….here is a sneak peek!
Thanks for reading! Muah! <3
