Making Icing For Piping

Getting icing right for piping can be a challenge.  You want the icing soft enough to taste lovely with the cake (there is nothing worse than really firm icing on top of a nice soft moist cake) but you also want icing that holds its shape brilliantly once piped.  I have had to learn this the hard way. When I started out making cakes for other people we had to drive with the cakes through Norfolk’s lovely rural pot-holed roads and on more than one ocassion I arrived to find that my oversoft icing had shimmied over the sides of the cupcakes.  I soon learnt how to get the correct consistency for the icing!

I normally make butter cream icing by beating 1kg of icing sugar with approx 375g of softened butter and add a couple of tablespoonfuls of hot boiled water to get the correct consistency.  If you do not want your kitchen covered in a fine layer of icing sugar put roughly half the icing sugar in a large bowl, add all of the butter and 2 tbsp of hot water and beat until smooth, then add the rest of the icing sugar plus any flavouring eg vanilla extract, mix it with a large spoon into the wet mixture then beat for a couple of minutes.

It is difficult to describe here how to get the correct consistency however one way to work this out for yourself is to then fill your piping bag with the icing.  Hold the top edge of the icing bag firmly and hold the bag over a solid floor then really sharply shake the bag up and down a few times.  If icing comes out of the nozzle and lands on the floor your mix is too wet, put it back in the bowl and beat in some more icing sugar.  Shaking the bag up and down is useful as it helps shift any air bubbles in the bag.  If no icing escaped try piping the icing, if you have to squeeze the bag really hard or your hand/arm aches, the icing is too hard.  Also, if when you ice the top of a cupcake, the icing seems to just sit on the top and not adhere to the cake then it is too hard.  If your icing is to hard put it back in the bowl and beat up with a tbsp of hot water and try again.

If, when you pipe the icing, it does not seem to hold its shape as well as you would like, particularly when using deeply cut star-type nozzles, then you can mix the buttercream with the same amount of royal icing or with made up meri-white meringue mix.  Both of these will give a firmer shape without losing the softness for piping and have the added advantage of producing a whiter buttercream.  Do see my other post on making whiter buttercream.

In my next post I will show you how to pipe using this deeply cut nozzle however the methods will be just as useful, albeit with a slightly different result, for a large star nozzle. I will also demonstrate 2 tone icing.

Related posts:

1. Buttercream Icing for Cupcakes
2. Cupcake Icing – Whiter Buttercream
3. Cream Cheese Frosting for Cupcakes
4. Making Simple Fondant Roses
5. Simple Victoria Sandwich Recipe