When my friend asked me whether I would be keen to do a cupcake decorating course the other week it only took me all of 0.5 seconds to say yes! Afterall as a burgeoning blogger/foodie I thought I ought to try my hand at something new and particularly something that I thought would be a challenge for me. Those who know me are aware that I suffer from a case of "careful shaky hands", that is when I'm trying to be extra careful (and sometimes even when I'm not) I get terrible shakes! So I knew that this would be an obstacle I'd have to overcome in the name of pretty cupcakes!
Off we went a little cafeteria slash cooking school in Southport. You can do a range of classes here, from cake decorating to pasta dishes. If you go to one of their night time classes you can even drink wine while you're cheffing it up! I arrived to see a mixture of faces, ages and nationalities; it seemed everyone was keen to give it a go. First we made our buttercream icing (250g of very soft butter and a packet of icing sugar, beat until well combined); 10 minutes in and I'd already made a bit of a mess! The beater ends got stuck and in my effort to pull them out I pressed the 'on' button and icing went flying everywhere! Not my proudest moment, but moving on... We made our icing our preferred colour, opting for an orangey red; to create, make your icing red and then add a dash of yellow. Simples!
Our teacher took us through some different styles and techniques and looking at her example cupcakes I was definitely apprehensive as to whether I could recreate them; shaky hands and all. But I needn't have worried. It actually turned out to be a lot easier than I first thought and with a bit of practice you find that you pick it up really quickly! We learnt the piping bag technique and how all the different ends work. There are so many types which all create a different kind of icing decoration and then each can be used several different ways so suffice to say there's a lot of many options!
Here are a few of the ones I perfected. I'm very proud of the ones I made and can say that I did indeed master a few of the techniques she showed us. When I've saved enough to buy the kit I'll definitely be trying these a home!