Happy New Years Eve! And a New Frosting Recipe
In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t made many cupcakes recently. I don’t know if I just got burnt out or what, but I’ve been making more bars and cookies recently. Bars are especially low maintenance which makes them so much easier to make than cupcakes. But cupcakes will always hold a special place in my heart. And I’ll continue to make them.
I actually made these cupcakes earlier in the year for a weekend getaway to a friend’s family lake house. I thought these photos with the sprinkles were perfectly festive for New Years Eve! Hubby and I are off ringing in the new year in Las Vegas with a big group of friends!
Since it’s our first trip to Vegas, I’m sure we’ll have a bunch of fun and plenty of stories to share when we get home. But for now, lets talk more about cupcakes. For these cupcakes, I used a classic chocolate cupcake recipe but I decided to try a new frosting recipe.
I used the new neon colored cupcake liners that have been in the grocery store this year. I love them because in general, the Wilton cupcake liners that come in a bag at stores like Michaels are cute, but they always seem to be a bit off in size. The cupcake liners that I order online are great – vibrant colors and the perfect size – but they’re a bit pricey. By default, I mostly use the classic pastel colored liners that come in the round plastic container, but recently, they’ve had these neon colored ones that are great. I can’t get enough of them!
This frosting has a great bakery-frosting flavor. It’s very sweet and everyone really enjoyed it. It had a decent amount of stiffness that was perfect for piping onto cupcakes as well. I will definitely be making this frosting again.
Dawn's Buttercream
Ingredients:
1 cup Crisco
1 pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons meringue powder
Directions:
Cream shortening, water and flavoring.
Add powdered sugar and meringue powder. Mix until blended.
Add additional water until you reach the desired consistency. If you want really white icing be sure to use a clear extract. Vanilla extract will make the icing off white.
Recipe from Cooking with Carrie
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy these. It had all my favourite flavours, so I thought they would be delicious but I had a feeling whilst making they were going to be too sweet, and they were.
Also the base definitely needs increasing as half the mix barely covers the bottom of the tin and with two wet elements it needs to be sturdier. Whilst the side pieces all stayed together the middle ones were just a gooey mess.
But still didn’t detract from the biggest issue – far too sweet. (And I have plenty a sweet tooth!)
Lovely blog though! (Sorry, hate leaving negative feedback! I just wouldn’t want someone else to have the same issues. Also, tinned pumpkin is quite pricey in the UK so wouldn’t want others to waste money on a recipe that doesn’t work)
beantownbaker — December 26th, 2013 @ 11:02 am
Sorry to hear this recipe didn’t work out for you… Thanks for the feedback.
I’m going to try these. I think Brits don’t generally eat things as sweet as we do and I read the recipe and it doesn’t seem as if it has too much sugar, but I am going to double the crust recipe because it does seem as if it is a bit scant, plus I’m going to make a double batch. Tell me, do these have to be stored in the fridge? I see the note to put in fridge to set. Are they too soft at room temp? If so, do you think not adding the milk to the dulce de leche would take care of that? I’m bringing them to an event and there will be no refrigeration available.