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Today I’m thinking about birthdays. About this time next year I’ll be celebrating the 1st birthday of my baby boy. Last summer, when I was battling serious pregnancy-sickness, I somehow managed to pull off 5 family birthdays within a 7 week period. What a whirlwind! These pictures are a flashback to last summer and such fun memories for me. (Pictures are mixed and matched from multiple birthdays. The pictures are like a puzzle, lol.)
I want to share with you my family buttercream recipe, a tip for using frosting bags, and how to make uniform cupcakes!
A Simple Buttercream Recipe
Let’s start with the frosting recipe. I use the butter cream frosting recipe my grandmother used. It is simple, delicious, and perfect! I am not a professional cake decorator, but I do like things to taste good, so this is my go-to frosting recipe for pretty much everything.
Simple Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup butter
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 2 Tbsp milk
Instructions
- Blend butter and sugar together.
- Blend in vanilla.
- Slowly add milk while mixing, until frosting is smooth and reaches desired consistency. You might end up adding more or less milk than recipe calls for, but that's expected.
- If you want colored icing, add food coloring after frosting is complete. Blend in a small amount of food color at a time until frosting reaches desired color.
- Use for cookies, cake, or anywhere you need frosting!
Frosting Bag Tip
You can buy a large pack of disposable frosting bags on Amazon. I use these often for icing, as well as things like funnel cake batter or storing frozen pancake batter. I’ve taken the frustration out of filling them by using a drinking glass. I put the frosting bag in the cup like you’d put a trash bag in a garbage can (sorry for the comparison, but it makes the most sense, lol). Push the bag open inside of the glass and spoon the frosting or batter into the bag while the glass is holding everything in place.
Pull the edges up from the glass, twist, and secure with a rubber-band or just hold the twist with your hand. Easy peasy! Homemade frosting, ready to go!
The finished bag…
We made lots of colors (and lots of icing bags to coordinate) to make decorating fun!
All important butterfly colors were represented. All we have to do is snip the tip off the icing applicator bags and we are good to go.
My little princess took her helper duties very seriously! This has become one of my favorite birthday pictures of all time. Princess reporting for cake duty!
Uniform Cupcake Size
For one birthday party we made cupcakes as the party favor. I found these cute cupcake boxes with a viewing window on top. The icing is just purple icing piped onto the top of the cupcake starting in the center and circling out. Even a child can do it! She may not love cake, but she still wanted to decorate cupcakes for her friends. (We didn’t do cake AT the party, which wasn’t as weird as it sounds.)
Cupcake tip: use a cookie scoop for your cupcake batter. It helps the wrappers not get messy and helps all the cupcakes be uniform in size! Such a simple thing makes such a big difference!
This is my favorite scoop for cupcakes and muffins. I use the big one for muffins and cupcakes, and the smaller one for cookies.
In our family, we have the tradition of everyone helping decorate their own birthday cake. It has been fun to see the progression of the cakes over the years and it is a favorite part of birthday celebrations for my girls who WANT to be involved in making their cakes.
My girls took cake-making very seriously last summer! I hope you enjoy the recipe and tips, and maybe the underlying tip in this is to involve your kids. Make the best birthday memories because childhood goes quickly!
From my home to yours,
Mary
Great recipe 🙂 I’ve been looking for a good frosting. I’ll definitely have to give this one a try. (Your little bakers are too cute too!) Stopping by from tip me Tuesday. Have a lovely day!
Your big girl has talent! I love that cake. ♥
Congrats on being featured on A Bowl Full of Lemons. That’s where I found you! Love the photo of your bathroom organizing…I had to pin it. Order is my passion, though I don’t always accomplish it the way I’d like to. New follower here.
I’d like to invite you to stop by my site for our Wonderful Wednesday blog hop which post, of all things, on Wednesdays! (This week it slipped in on Tuesday…it will go live at 8pm though I won’t even be able to post till a little later. )
Please stop by and add your links–
http://www,ducksnarow.com
I also read and watched a video about putting the frosting on plastic wrap first, then twist the ends (like a tootsie roll) and then pull it through the decorating bag—VERY easy clean up. Thanks for the recipe.
Great idea. Thanks for sharing. 🙂