The Tip is What Matters - Week 2

For those of you following my progress, this week was one huge step for mankind… Well, not really. I really like to keep things simple when I am first trying something out, so there was not a huge step from last week. My min focus of the week was to actually start decorating my cupcakes instead of just frosting them. If you’re lucky, and I have enough energy to frost all 24 of these cupcakes, there may be a little treat for you all on day 6! It won’t be much, but I mean cupcakes are cupcakes, am I right. I’ll try to make them look as pretty as I can and dazzle all of you with my artistic decorating abilities.

So, like I said, I actually started to decorate the cupcakes this week. My goal was to find 12 different ways to decorate a cupcake, and since there are 24 cupcakes. The only problem was that I got a little hungry when decorating them and so there are really only 23 cupcakes… That’s beside the point, though. So I was successful in finding all 12 of my types of decorations. I struggled to find the 12 for a while. And I was ecstatic when I found a 12^th that was easy enough for a beginner. But, I overlooked one slight problem: most of the decorations need special types of tips to go on the end of the piping bags. I did not realize the predicament I put myself into until I went to decorate one of

the 12 that I picked out, and I didn’t have the tip for it. So, I made do with the 6 tips that I had, and made the (somewhat) beautiful creations for this week.

Oh and if anyone was wondering, I decided to not make my own frosting this week. The frosting for last week only tasted like confectioner’s sugar and it didn’t taste like frosting at all. So I was very disappointed in the recipe I found, got frustrated, and resorted to using Betty Crocker’s wonderful frosting. The decorations I have for you this week are: the 1 M Swirl, The Round Tip Swirl, The Rosette, The Ruffle Shuffle, The E-Motion, The good ol’ Zig Zag, The Pull Out Star, The Zig Zag Puff (a twist on the original), The Shell, The Hershey Kiss, and The Spike.

From former experience, I have found that more often than not, frosting is much too thick to be able to spread into different forms. The frosting you take right out of the can is made to just cover the cupcakes with one layer. So, I didn’t know what to do with the frosting to make it thinner. I thought about leaving it out for a while, but it really didn’t do much. Thankfully my mom has dabbled in her cake decorations and she knew exactly what to do. I added some milk and BAM… perfect frosting consistency. Well… that is until you let them sit out for a little. I frosted the first two and found them to be running a little bit. I had to readjust and put them into the fridge to cool and harden a little. Maybe I’ll keep with this technique of frosting and then cooling. I think I might just cool the frosting a little bit. Now that I think of it, cooling the cupcakes

kind of contradicts the idea of adding milk… Oh well.

**The cupcake on the RIGHT in each picture is the second cupcake**

The 1 M Swirl

            This one was easy. I took a simple star tip and put a small dot of frosting in the middle. I’m sure you could guess that I came out with a neat little star… but if you couldn’t then… uhh… I’m a little bit worried quite honestly. Anyway, once you have the star in the middle, you apply the same amount of pressure and begin to swirl outwards from the star. You get this nice little swirled pattern, hence the name. As I said before, each decoration gets two cupcakes. So on the second cupcake I swirled and as I got to the edge of the cupcake, began to do the same circular motion towards the center of the cupcake to give it some volume. All in all, I’m actually very proud of my first two decorations. I’ll add some sprinkles and other little candies at the end of all my decorating to spice up the cupcakes a little.

                                                                                  The Round Tip Swirl

            Okay let me tell you. This one was NOT easy. The directions (I have this whole website that has directions on how to do all of these decorations) tell you to like do it quickly and go in a circular motion. And like they have pictures, so like you’d think it would help. But it doesn’t. It has like the beginning and then the next step is the end and it’s very clear that the cupcake in the first picture is not the same as the second. So basically you do the same thing as the 1M  Swirl but you use a large circular tip. And it was a little stressful and these cupcakes don’t look as pretty as I was hoping, but I’m just going to move forward.

The Rosette

            So after some short research about the rosette, I came to find that this is the decoration that is very common on cupcakes from bakeries. So if someone tells you to imagine a cupcake and you see that patterned swirl, you are most likely thinking of a cupcake with the rosette on top. As I move farther into these decorations I have come to notice that the counter-clockwise circular motion is very common. This decoration was similar to the first one, so I made 4 little rosettes on each cupcake to show the difference. I was glad I was able to take my time with these and they came out pretty well.

The Ruffle Shuffle

            It’s really just the ruffle, but I added the shuffle just because “the ruffle” is too boring for me. I was not very fond of this one. It was a little weird and I realized that this is better for the border of a cake. It was not effective for decorating the cupcakes. But in reality, this border technique is better for me for the following weeks. But what you had to do was hold the tip at a 45° angle and move the tip up and to the right. To end the ruffle, you push back down. They started off a little ugly and I found

that when moving down if you move the tip back into the frosting you get this nice little mountain of frosting. It made the ruffle easier to see. In the pictures you can see a close-up to the right to see the decoration a little better.

The E-Motion

            Yet again, I come across another decoration for the borders. This decoration is simple. It’s really exactly what it sounds like. You press the tip down and make a cursive “e”. You just continue the cursive “e” and write them like you would when you were first learning cursive. Just switch out that pencil for a frosting bag and continue your line of various looking “e’s”. I actually accidentally decorated these to look like the Hostess® cupcakes

Good ol’ Zig Zag feat. The Puff

            I decided to just group these two decorations together considering they are basically the same. I’m sure you can guess what it looks like. I was interested to find out for almost ¾ of all the decorations use the same star tip. I was expecting to have to change and clean the tip each time but it actually made my life much easier. So to all of my indie/alternative music listeners, this decoration looked A LOT like the Arctic Monkey’s artwork on their latest album looks like. It was mostly the puff one, but both looked relatively like it. So the puff one was different just because of how the strokes got wider and wider until you decided you reached the middle point and then they started to get smaller again. So like if you were to draw a tornado, it would be wider at the top and thinner at the bottom, sort of like that.

The Pull Out Star

            There isn’t really much to this one. You just make a star, and pull away as you decrease the pressure. It’s basically what the title states. But let me tell yo

u, the example pictures for this went 0 to 100 really quick. You had like just one tiny star and then the last one was like this whole crazy caterpillar thing. I can’t even explain it.

            Since I just realized how redundant this post has been I’ll speed past the last few and give you a nice little video to watch for the last 3. So the shell looks like a shell (surprise!!!). Basically you just pipe out a lot of frosting and gradually decrease as your bring the bag closer towards you. And here would be the video, the second of the HowCast videos from their baking playlist that I have used. It tells how to do the The Hershey Kiss and The Spike way better than I would be able to explain. And it also gives you a nice visual of how to do it.

            So, a whole week and 5 pounds later, I am finally signing off. I have successfully eaten almost an entire can of frosting and also improved my decorating skills. I also widened my range of decorating techniques and designs. I would say I have a decent repertoire at the moment. Honestly, I just wanted to use the word repertoire. I hope you enjoy your treats for this block day. And I’m pretty certain in saying you can expect some type of treat to come your way every day our blog posts are due until the end of the project.

            And as I promised, I have to score myself on how stressed I feel. So, out of 10, I’ll give this week a solid 3. There’s still a lot of work for me in the coming days, but I was able to take a little time out of the week to spend on just something I enjoy.

See ya next week,

Baking prodigy: Jacob Kaffey

Comments:
Simon Schiller
Lizzy Cutler
Matt Graeff