Foolproof Baking for Beginners: Cake Frosting Decorations Made Easy!

1. Introduction: Hi everyone, welcome or welcome back to full proof baking for Beginners. I'm the instructor as modally, just to give a brief introduction to the course I created for proof baking for beginners as an attempt to make any and all baking endeavors easy applicable and super delicious for any beginner Baker. I wasn't beginner Baker myself. And now I'm at a point where actually have a banking business that's going really well. So I just wanted to share some of my newfound wisdom onto you. The last series I did was all about cookies. And this series I'm actually particularly excited for because we're going to be tackling something that is typically seen as something very complicated and complex, but it's actually surprisingly easy. We're gonna be going through frosting declarations. So first off, I'm gonna give you guys two different recipes for butter cream frostings that are absolutely delicious. The first one is a Swiss meringue buttercream frosting. This I use for my decorations most of the time because it's a very stable butter cream and does a much better alternative for American buttercream because it tastes a lot better and it's a lot more stable. The second buttercream I'm going to show you guys is my PSD resistance. You can call it, I'm telling you this buttercream is the best chocolate frosting you're ever going to try whenever I make it, it's the first thing people comment on any of my chocolate cakes are cupcakes. It's a chocolate cream, cheese, butter cream frosting. That's a little bit less stable. So I'm going to show you guys how you can use it, how you can pipe with it. Then finally, I'm gonna be showing you guys how to make floral decorations with the Swiss meringue buttercream that are super effective on cakes, cupcakes, even cookies, and are actually super easy to make. So I hope you guys stick with me for this course is going to be a really great one. 2. Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting: Hi everyone. Let's get started on our Swiss meringue buttercream. I want to remind you guys that I'm having the recipe here because I don't need that big amount of buttercream. Your ingredients are going to look away more than this. So I have my sugar, my butter. You want to make sure that your butter is soft enough that you can indent your finger in it. But not to software, It's soupy. Have my eggs, I'm just doing my room temperature trick, vanilla and salt. Typically you add cream of tartar to this recipe, but I can't get my hands on any here in Egypt. And so I would use vinegar because it works as a stabilizer for the frosting for that, specifically the egg whites and the sugar. But I find that you get the flavor of the vinegar, so I don't really like to use it. I don't use anything and it's completely fine. So now I'm gonna go separate my eggs. Here the recipe calls for three eggs. This is my version of an egg and a half. It's not super accurate, but it'll do. This is the best way I find to separate egg whites and egg yolks. You just crack the egg onto your finger and let the egg whites slide through the cracks. Here. I'm just putting it through the Sun, making sure that there are no egg yolks, no traces of egg yolks and my egg whites because then it will not whip up. So now I'm going to start my double boiler here. I like to use a very shallow pot. And you also have to make sure that the bowl you're using has no traces of fat in it. And so that's why I recommend using a stainless steel bowl. I want to also make sure that the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water because I don't want that kind of direct heat. I'm going to add my egg yolks, egg whites, sorry, and my sugar. You put it on the heat and you want to continuously whiskey that this process might take two to four minutes. You want to continuously with good. The way that you could tell that it's ready is you run your fingers through it. I can't really do the trick right now because I'm filming with one hand and holding with another, but you're supposed to put your whisk up like that, run your fingers through the stream of liquid that's coming down. So I'll just show you just like that. You want to make sure that you can't feel any sugar granules. If you can still feel sugar granules, that means it didn't dissolve yet, then you continue keeping on the heat until you can no longer feel sugar granules. Now it's done. This is how it looks like. Just double-checking that there are no sugar granules. Perfect. And I want to let you guys know why we use a double boiler. The reason why we do this is because if you put them in the microwave, the eggs will pop. It won't work. If you put it on direct heat, the egg whites will cook and the sugar will not dissolve. And so that's why the double boiler method is the best way to go. It adds heat without cooking the egg whites. I'm going to put that baby aside and bust out the stand mixer. You can use a hand mixer. I just find this stand mixer is much easier to use because your arm doesn't get tired because this is going to get an a whisk for awhile. You can also do it by hand if your hulk. Oh man, please ignore the fact that my whisk attachment is dirty. I did not notice that until now. So now I'm just going to add my egg whites first, my egg white mixture, and start beating it. Because the mixture is warm, it will take longer than it usually takes to whip egg whites. I know when you make from wearing it tastes about five-minutes, Ten max. But just trust the process to keep it going on Macs, give it the time that it needs and don't stress. It's really easy to stress at this point if the egg whites don't fluff up like you're expecting to. I'm telling you here, it never takes me this long to with my egg whites. And this here, this clip is minute 24 or 25 and it's still not ready yet. So I was super nervous, but it finally came to. You can see that it's firm now. I can best tell when I flip the whisk up if the peak remains maintains, it can be firmer than this though. But the best thing that, the biggest thing I learned when it comes to making this buttercream specifically is just trust the process and keep going. So now I'm going to add the butter. You add it bit by bit. You can cut it into neat cubes and add Cu by Cu, but you don't really have to do that. I'm going to add my butter. When I add a bit of butter, I want to make sure that it's completely incorporated before I add any more butter. And makes sure to scrape down the sides. Always scrape down the sides. We want it to be on modulus mixture. Sometimes. When you add the butter, the mixture can become very liquidy and it can even separate. You could feel like the butter separates from the other mixture and it starts looking really grainy, really weird. Super scary. Do not panic, just continue whisking it and it will come together. That's just has to do with some temperature issues there, but it will mix properly. Thankfully, that didn't happen to me here at my temperatures were fine, but if it happens to at-home, don't panic. It will work out. You just have to trust the process. This is seriously a foolproof buttercream recipe because of that. The more you whisk the butter it comes together. I don't know, the science behind it does not make sense, but it's awesome. Show you guys how silky and beautiful that looks. And the more you whisk it, the lighter in color it gets. So it's a very nice white buttercream, you know, as opposed to American buttercream that has a very yellow tinge to it. This one's a lot lighter. You can use it as white butter cream. I learned to tip also. I just didn't have any purple frosting on hand. If you want to make it even wider, you put just a couple of drops of purple food coloring in the mixture. It helps. I think it contrasts the yellow and the frosting and it makes it very wide. It's very cool. Definitely recommend for a very white frosting. Now I'm going to add my salt. This again is to taste. I'm sorry for the shaky camera. I'm not being a very great camera, a woman. So now you add your vanilla. This is also to taste like a strong vanilla flavors. I just add whip it tasted. See if you want to add more salt and more vanilla. That's up to you. I'm just scraping down the size. I'm going to whisk it another time just to make sure everything is perfectly incorporated. Look how beautiful and silky smooth. That looks. ****. And don't be fooled by like how silky and wet it looks. This is an extremely firm frosting. And can you see that? I want to remind you that my kitchen is very hot right now, it's the middle of summer. And this buttercream is still firming up so well holding its shape and it's only going to get firmer when you put it in the fridge. I'm going to pack it in some Tupperware. This stage in the fridge for about two to three weeks and it can live in the freezer for 34 months. So I hope you try this recipe. Let me know, enjoy. 3. Chocolate Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting: Hello, welcome to this very special video of my secret weapon, frosting, the chocolate cream cheese butter cream frosting. Here I have my butter powdered sugar, cream cheese, chocolate, vanilla, and salt. Again, I'm having the recipe here, so your ingredients are gonna be way more than this. Again, we're bringing out the stand mixer. You can use a hand mixer here. It is easier to use the hand mixer here than it is for the Swiss meringue buttercream, so that's fine. I don't recommend whisking by hand, but again, you could do that. Here I have my room temperature cream cheese, get every last bit. And my room temp butter. You can see that there's way more cream cheese and butter. It's just, it gives a really nice tangy flavor that's totally different than any other frosting and I've tasted, and that's what really makes it so special. So the secret ingredient is the cream cheese. Again, I'm going to add my whisk attachment. Struggle putting my whisk attachment. Okay, we did it. That's the hardest part of this entire recipe. I'm going to whisk that, keep it on high. The best thing about this is it's very hard to over whisk in this process. And actually the more you whisk, the lighter the frosting will be in both color and texture and flavor. So just make sure to scrape down the sides and leave it until your heart's content. Just keep going. This is about minute four or five, but I still wanted to keep it a little longer. So here's seven minutes have passed, and you could tell how light and creamy texture is. And that's about it. It's a nice color, a nice texture I'm happy with. I'm going to start adding my powdered sugar. You could add it in thirds in halves. I just don't recommend adding it all at once because it makes a huge sugar Cloud, which is not fun to clean up after. Start slow so that nothing puffs out of the mixer. Then just slowly increase the speed. When it's fully incorporated. Add the rest of the sugar. Again, sorry guys for the terrible filming here. Just like action filming. I only have one hand. We work with what we got. So time passed and now it's perfectly incorporated. I scraped the bottoms, there's no more sugar left. I'm going to add my cocoa powder. Same thing here. Don't want to puff cloud of cocoa powder so you start slow, increase the speed. Here. It's very important to use your spatula because you could see so much cocoa powder is around. You want to make sure to scrape the bottom. Now it's one Incorporated and I'm going to add my salt and I want you guys to try something just so you see the difference that salt makes it tastes the frosting before you add salt. Add your salt and tastes it again, you're going to see a huge difference in the complexity of the flavors. It's insane. I like a lot of salt. If I'm being honest in this frosting adjuvant nella, I definitely forgot to put vanilla in there. It's not a big deal, it just adds another layer of flavor. You can already tell that this frosting is a lot wetter than this this morning frosting. And so that's why it's limited what decorations you can make with this frosting and you want to make sure to refrigerate it before you use it. And it also lives for awhile in the fridge for around two to three weeks. But in the freezer for two to three months, I wouldn't really exceed the three-month limit. Okay. Thank you for watching. Let me know if you try this recipe. 4. Piping Chocolate Frosting on Cupcakes: Hi everyone. In this video, I'm gonna be showing you how to decorate cupcakes with the chocolate cream, cheese butter cream frosting, just because it's not as firm as other frostings and it could be a little tricky when it comes to cupcake specifically. Right now, I'm using the roast hip, it has five teeth. You can use any other tip that's large like this, that has the same idea where it's many tips. Here's just a basic rows. You want to keep a tight grip on the piping bag and you want to go slowly but not too slow and piping. And just have a tight little circular motion and then end it going down, not up. So when you end the rows, you want the piping tip to face downward. This is another very simple cupcake design. You just squeeze and release. And it makes a pretty funky looking flower. And it might not look like you might look at this and think that it doesn't look very beautiful on its own, even though I would disagree. But if you do, when it's amongst many cupcakes, the designs, each design somehow looks so much better when you have a lot of different looking cupcakes all next to each other, even if one design isn't as fine-tuned or pretty as another. This is another very simple wave technique. It's all very simple here we do simple designs with this frosting because it's not stable and because you can't really go super creative with it, because it will melt. And so these are ways to keep it nice and firm. And remember, you're using the frosting when it's slightly chilled, not too cold because then it's too firm and not room temp because then it'll melt. Here. I just made another rows because I want to show you a final, very cute technique you could do. If you want to make it look like a cupcake from a cartoon, you just have a Rosetta and then you make another rose with that release at the top, that tip at the top. Just like that. This tip is really helpful. I really recommend getting one and using it. Here's another easy way to decorate the cupcake. If you don't even have a piping tip, you could just dial up some on there on the cupcake and then just play around with wavy motions until you get a look that you like. I'm just playing around a little more. And at the end, you're going to get whether you have your butter knife or you have a spatula like this and just clean it up on the sides, it still looks very pretty. And again, you can dress any of your cupcakes with some sprinkles. Also make it look extra cute. I like to do that with this wavy technique because it doesn't have as much finesse as the piped cupcakes. I just want to talk about the spatula. This is from the art supply store and it works really well. I really recommend getting a palette knife like this, or you could just use a butter knife. I just wanted to show you guys how it bites. It's, it holds very well, even though it's a very soft frosting. The bite is perfect and it tastes delicious. I hope you guys found this video helpful, which is a simple, nice way to decorate your cupcakes with this really delicious Frosty. 5. Floral Frosting Decorations: Hi, welcome to the exciting video of this series. This is the decorations here I have my Swiss meringue buttercream ready, my piping tips, food coloring, a cup or a bowl. And these are just either wax paper or parchment paper that I cut into little squares. And I'll let you know, are we going to use this for really soon? You also want to have something just like a small surface. You could use a shot glass here. I'm just using a small cup because we're going to stick the papers on here and then decorate around it. Okay, Let's get started Now we have our piping bags. Obviously. Don't forget your piping bags. I'll let you know what flowers we're making today. We're making sunflowers, roses, and a cute little flower that I made up. I don't know what you could call it. I don't even know what those flowers are called. They're the ones that grow on absolutely every bush, everywhere. You'll understand it when you see it. I'm just going to start coloring my frosting. Here I have yellow. I'm using liquid food coloring, even though I do recommend gel food coloring. If you can get your hands on some, they create much more vibrant colors with a smaller amount and they don't introduce a lot of liquid into your frostings or whatever you're bad or whatever you're using it for, which makes it very helpful. So if you're in between buying liquid or gel food coloring, definitely go for the Joe. Trying to make a pinky color. See what I mean with the liquid. It takes a little bit longer to mix it in, but stay patient. It will eventually incorporate. I'm happy with this color, so I'm not going to add anymore food coloring. It looks a little peachy in this camera, but it was much more pink in-person. Finally, I'm gonna go for a green color because I'm going to make pipe some leaves. What do we use this cup for? Why do I have a cup? I'll let you know why the cup. It's very helpful when it comes to filling your piping bag. Here I'm using a 67 tip. This is going to be for my sunflowers. You can see the shape, it has two teeth like that. You can also use there's the thicker piping tip if you want to make bigger petals. That's also an option. That's up to you. But here I'm making smaller flowers, smaller declarations. Snip your piping bag, add in your tip, and then put it into the cup and folded outward like that. Now you're just going to pour your buttercream in there. So much easier than doing it by hand, way less messy. It's a great hack and it changed my piping bag filling game. Okay, so that now that it's filled, I'm working the butter cream down to the tip trying to make sure that there are no air bubbles in between. Because if there are air bubbles inside, it's going to mess up with your piping. It's kind of annoying. It'll make it like an air pocket. It might mess up the look. So just make sure that there are no air bubbles. Here. I'm just going to put a tiny bit about a cream just to stabilize the wax paper. I'm going to start piping. You want to squeeze lightly. You don't want to push too hard because you don't want to pop the bag. And you just go outward, work your way outward. You just want to make a circle. And so this is why it's very helpful to have a shot glass or a cup to stabilize your hand. And you just keep going. There is no crazy magic technique to this. This is why it's so simple, foolproof, awesome. Use. Continue going. This is a thin layer, so I'm trying to, so I'm going to make two layers of petals a top of each other because it's a small tip. And I want to make sure that the flower is stable because I'm going to freeze this in the freezer and peel it off the wax paper and place it onto a cake or a cupcake. You can put it on a cookie. It's very versatile. And if you feel like you made a mistake in your piping, don't worry, just pipe over it like trust me, it's an easy process. Everything is fixable. It's very hard to mess us up. Now I want to make the center of the sunflower, so I'm just mixing in some cocoa powder and make a brown color. Actually a funny story one time I was trying to make brown with a bunch of food coloring. I'm putting green and orange and red. And then I try and get a brown color. I put I had some black. I put some black. And my brother walks in and I'm so stressed, I'm like, Oh my God, I can't I can't figure out how to make Brown. And he goes, why don't you just add cocoa powder? Okay, So here I'm gonna be using this small tip circular to number two. Same process again. Here I don't really need the cup of just a tiny bit. Frosting. This is a total waste of a piping bag if you ask me, but you'll be hopefully creating much more flowers than this. I'm just doing one as an example, so don't worry. There you go. We have a sunflower. It's gonna look better after it freezes, believe it or not, it looks more neat, more tidy after it's frozen. So when you want to make a rose flower, It's all these kinds of shapes give you the same result when it's a circle and it just has a bunch of teeth around it. I chose this one. Same trick. I have the red. These are going to be little mini roses, so I'm not making the beautiful grand looking roses yet. This is just small little decorations. Filler flowers, if you will. You have your big main flowers, you have your sunflowers are big roses. Or if you want to make a panther mom or something like that, you could play around with the piping, tips, play around with everything. These are filler flowers that you put in between that just accentuate how it looks. Here. You have little rose. It's a tiny little flower like that. Don't worry about the floating bit of butter cream. I'm going to cover it with a leaf later on. It doesn't really matter how perfect that these filler flowers look. They're gonna look way better anyways, once they're amongst all the other flowers and on the cake, the look does change. So that's how you make small little rows. It's just a quick kind of circular thing. You don't want to push too hard on the piping bag or go too fast or too slow. It's just don't think too hard about it. Go in a circular motion, makes sure that it's nice and tight. And then this flower is very easy to make. It's very cute and it looks very pretty. It's honestly one of my favorite flowers make even though it's so simple. You just pipe, pipe, pipe release, pipe release, pipe release to a circle. And it looks very pretty and this can be a very grand flower if you put two different colors of buttercream, I have cupcakes and I make my firm fatty cupcakes. I use the same technique, but I have two different colors. And so it makes it look very complex, like super interesting, but it's actually a very simple piping technique. So here I have my filler flowers and a freeze those. And now onto my big beautiful rose here, it's the same piping tip I used before but just much bigger. It's a number 347. So here I'm going to show you guys the technique of having different colors of butter cream. So I'm just going to pipe the different colors on each side. Here. This is easy because I have them in piping bags. But if you don't have them in piping bags and you want to make neat swirls like a neat color. What I like to do is I have I'm cling film, just make a square of clink film and either spoon or pipe your different colors that you want across the cling film and then you roll it altogether. So what makes a log makes sure to tightly sealed both ends. And then you cut snip one end so that the butter cream is exposed. Just pop that into the piping bag that already has the tip inside and you have a perfect swirl color. Here. I just mentally put the yellow and the pink everywhere. It doesn't really matter. It's going to pipe out, well, don't worry, I like to add white. These three colors together, they make such a beautiful rose. It's my favorite color combo to make. Gonna, I'm gonna stabilize my wax paper. And then just do the same technique. You want to have. Tight piping, not too fast, not too slow. And the best thing about having different colors like this is that each row is going to look different. The colors are going to come out different and it's very pretty. Okay, so now I'm going to make the leaves, these are going to cover any flaws, but also they work very well as fillers because they're not very intricate leaves. This is just a very simple kind of splash of green color. Because again, we're going for simple, easy looks here. It's just an easy way to elevate. Your declarations. Have this tip. There are several tips that you can use for leaves. Actually, this is just the one I chose for today. You just put them on the sides wherever you like. I don't always put them the way that I'm decorating with them right now. Usually I add my leaves after I put the flowers on the cake and then it's just the last step. I'll show you guys and one of the cakes that I made. But I'm here, my sunflower is frozen and it's coming out. See how easy it is to peel off the wax paper. It's just that easy guys. You just take it off, place it on the cake and you have a very beautiful looking cake. Can just adding leaves. Here. I think I added one to many, but that's okay. This is just an example of a cake that I made where I use these techniques. So beautiful and easy. Hope you guys enjoyed this. It was really fun making this series. And stay tuned for some more foolproof baking for beginner gems.