I’ve liked baking as a concept for a while, but in the past year or so I’ve been particularly enjoying watching baking competitions. So far I’ve most enjoyed Sugar Rush, Zumbo’s Just Desserts, and Nailed It!

I especially like Nailed It! because like all of the contestants on that show, I’m pretty sure I could do a better job (in this show amateur bakers compete to recreate beautifully created baked goods; with the time limits placed on them, I’m sure my attempts would be similarly not great, but I like to think I can do something nice).

And yes, I have attempted to watch the Great British Baking Show but I just haven’t been able to get into it.

My particular interest in baking though, is the decorating. So I gave it another go recently, with the intention of actually documenting the efforts this time around. Armed with a few YouTube icing tutorials, I went to work creating some cupcakes.

Despite what the Betty Crocker TM box of strawberry cake mix claims, it does not make 24 cupcakes, as you can see in the photo above. This particular pan I acquired for the purposes of making gender reveal cupcakes (who knew it was possible to do a gender reveal without burning down half of California??).

The aforementioned gender reveal cupcakes came out really well and I managed to ice them beautifully! But it must have been a fluke because since then I hadn’t been able to recreate the icing effect. Hence the YouTube tutorials. So next came the buttercream.

It may look nice (and it tasted amazing, as one might expect of a butter and sugar mixture) but I made a critical mistake (the same one I made while making a smash cake for my offspring’s first birthday): I didn’t put in enough confectioner’s sugar. In my attempt to not make the buttercream painfully sweet, I didn’t use all the sugar that the recipe called for. But the sugar doesn’t only contribute sweetness, it also gives the buttercream more structure. This made for meltier looking icing. I attempted to add in some more sugar with a spoon because I had already put away the hand mixer and no way was I going to bust that thing out again, but it made the color of the icing become less consistent. So two lessons learned there.

I went with three colors of icing. Two tones of purplish-red for the flowers (the tutorials mentioned that it would make the flowers look more realistic) and green for the leaves. Additionally I tried mixing all the colors together to attempt to make hydrangeas but the effect didn’t come out the way I had planned. But without the green the effect was pretty nice!

The colors didn’t come out really nice because I was using regular food dye, like the kind you might use for dying eggs. My understanding is that the really rich colors can only be achieved by using special gel coloring (which I have since acquired for a next attempt). And then the final issue was the fact that I only had the one reusable icing bag, unlike the horrifically environmentally-unfriendly one use ones the professionals use. So I’m thinking I’ll get another icing bag so that it would be easier to do multiple colors of icing. Some came out pretty well though.

Another great thing about having watched the tutorials is that I finally know how to do roses!

I’m actually kind of amazed at how quickly I was able to improve just after having watched a video or two.

And my favorite…

Finally, here’s a shot of my best ones all together:

I’m excited to get even better next time (with some additional equipment to help the process!) but for now I’m busy eating these cupcakes and I’m all baked out.

V