First Cupcake Decorating

21 Feb

I had received the Wilton 18-pc starter set and set out to decorate some cupcakes.

XO Cupcakes!

The Wilton cupcake decorating class provided some of their stock White Decorator Icing (stiff consistency). We had to thin it out with 3-4 teaspoons of water to make it usable for the beginner’s designing on the cupcakes.

Cupcake
(Using the #18 star tip to create pull-out stars)

I dyed my frosting with black icing color, imagining that I would get an emo grey. Surprise! I got this awesome purple pictured in my cupcake shots. I’m really excited because this is my favorite shade of purple and I declare that I don’t think I have ever seen it grace a cupcake or cake before. I wonder why.

Cupcake
(Using the #4 round tip for the dots)

Also with the class came this cool little beginner’s cake/frosting decorating book by Wilton. They have some great techniques in there with excellent illustrations that far exceed the little guide that comes in the starter kit. I’m very visual so I require an extended illustrated guide.

Cupcake
(Using the #18 star tip to create rosettes)

It was a ton of fun to make these pretty and yummy cupcakes. I hope to make more cupcakes – and perhaps delve into the realm of cookie decorating soon. The cupcakes themselves were plain vanilla. I want to find a great frosting recipe so that I don’t have to use their frosting pack – it was quick and easy, but you don’t think “yum delicious amazing!” when eating it like some of the other frostings I have made.

Pretty cupcakes!

I’ve also added a new Decorating set in my Flickr Food collection. Now I can share yummy goodness with friends here and pretty goodness with the world :o)

20 Worst Foods in America 2009

6 Feb

Annually, Eat This, Not That (a division of Men’s Health magazine) releases its 20 worst foods of the year.

The #1 worst food is shocking to me:

Baskin Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake
2,600 calories
135 g fat (59 g saturated fat, 2.5 g trans fats)
263 g sugars
1,700 mg sodium

Wow! More than a day’s intake of all those items in a single drink! And, if you’re like me, those shakes go down pretty quickly.

Eat This, Not That is great because (by the very nature of the publication) it offers a healthful alternative at the same locale for every item it warns against:

Eat This Instead! (and ask for two spoons)
2-Scoop Hot fudge Sundae
Chocolate and Vanilla
530 calories
29 g fat (19 g saturated fat)
52 g sugars

Sounds equally yum but for a fraction of the fattening junk! I wish the site had a unique RSS feed, but it only has an email newsletter. To subscribe, or not to subscribe…

117 Nagging Food Questions

22 Jan

Make that 117 Nagging Food Questions and counting! Over at Chow, a food media site, every week the answer of a new nagging food question is posted. As of January 15, 117 answers are at your disposal!

Some of my favorites?

via Wordhole

Recipes on Flickr

16 Jan

A lot of food groups on Flickr are pure fluff – just pretty photos of food with no utility beyond the visual. Once in a great while I enjoy looking at food, but more often than not, I’m going to want to reproduce it!

I stumbled upon a a few groups whose premise is that each photo must be accompanied by a recipe or a link to a recipe. It combines my love of looking at delicious food with real life reviews and reproduction ability! Recipes to Share, Cooking (recipe required), The (un)official Flickr cookbook, and Food with Blogged Recipes are all recipe based Flickr groups.

One delight that I found through The (un)official Flickr cookbook is this excellent idea of a Lemon-Ginger cookie:
Lemon-Ginger Cookie, From Flickr
You can find the recipe at the user’s blog, Coconut & Lime.

View my “food” tagged Flickr items to see more yums that yours truly has made or just plain eaten.