Frostings

I have a couple weddings coming up this summer that I've been asked to do cupcakes for. I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with different cake recipes and FROSTINGS! I love a good frosting! I'm particularly found of sweet frostings. I think even frosting out of a can is great. There are many recipes out there, but first I turned to Martha Stewart for advice. I bought her Cupcake Book. 175 mouth watering cupcake recipes inside. She praises the Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe and uses it on many of her cupcakes. 4 sticks of butter, 1 cup of sugar and 5 egg whites. It took a bit of creating and it did produce a beautiful frosting that piped well and it had a great silky texture. The taste, however, was not delicious. Too me it was like silky smooth slightly sweet butter. Yesterday I made Peggy Porschens butter cream frosting from her Pretty Party Cakes Book for the football cupcakes that I had made. Much better. Smooth and sweeter. No egg whites this time, much easier. I'm still not sure its the recipe I'm looking for. I will experiment with a few more. I plan on doing some valentine cupcakes this week. I made some cute chocolate filligree hearts yesterday when I was piping the chocolate footballs. I put them aside in a bowl to top my valentine cupcakes. Well later on in the day 11 of them went missing. Ryan thought he'd help himself to my chocolate heart creations. His excuse was that they were so little and tasty and since they were just in a bowl he thought they were freebies. Hmmmmm.

The footballs are melted chocolate piped onto parchment paper until they harden, then peel off.