Grass Cupcakes

I received a request for grass cupcakes. You’ll see why in the next post…and trust me, you definitely won’t want to miss it!

Back to the cupcakes…I made a batch of confetti cupcakes in green liners. We were having trouble finding green liners until just a few days before when I came across these at King Soopers:

However, the store only had one package (which does not have enough of one color for a full batch of cupcakes) and I didn't have time that day to check the other stores. But thanks to my wonderful Mom, who picked up some other packages at a different store, we were able to get enough green liners.

Then I tried out a new butter cream recipe; Extra Special Butter Cream. I tweaked it just a tad (details below). Then I dyed it green using a combination of Wilton Kelly Green and Lemon Yellow. As a reminder, butter cream colors always get a couple of shades darker as they set.

I filled a bag with Tip #233 and got to work.

These are preliminary pictures of some of the cupcakes (not the full batch), just wait until you see the final product!

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Extra Special Buttercream

(Adapted from a recipe given to me by my cake instructor that she got from an old Wilton newsletter)

1 cup solid vegetable shortening (I used butter flavor Crisco, but regular would work)

1 cup real unsalted butter

2 lbs powdered sugar (~4 cups in a pound)

1 teaspoon (plus a few drops extra) vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon Wilton butter flavoring

8 oz whipping cream

Optional: a few drops of almond extract

Cream shortening and butter until fluffy. Add sugar and continue creaming until well-blended.

Add flavors (extracts) and whipping cream; blend on low speed until moistened (my little hand mixer had to use medium to have enough power to blend the icing).

Beat at high speed until icing is fluffy.

Notes:

The whipping cream can be replaced with 4-5 tablespoons of water.

For a whit/white icing, use 2 cups of regular shortening (not butter flavor) and no butter with Wilton Clear Vanilla.

The original recipe called for 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, which I did not include because I once heard a story about the salt not absorbing the colors and leaving white spots on the cake when the icing dried. I think this can be avoided by first dissolving the salt before adding to the icing, but I didn't want to risk it.

The original recipe also called for 1 teaspoon of the Wilton butter flavoring, but I was afraid that might be too much since I had the butter flavored Crisco.

The original recipe also recommended 1 teaspoon of almond flavoring, but I wasn't sure how that would taste with confetti cake so I only added a few drops for just a hint of almond flavor.

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