Review: Cupcake Decorating Lab

madnad

Despite their popularity, I don’t make a lot of cupcakes. It’s not that I don’t like them – I adore them – but if I am honest, its too small a canvas for me. I love decorating cakes, and the flexibility that offers. When I look at a cupcake, my decorating mind goes blank, so when I was given the opportunity to review this book, I jumped at the chance.

Bridget Thibeault ran her business Flour Girl, out of her home for five years before opening a commercial outlet in the form of Luna Cafe, in Ohio. This book offers recipes and techniques for decorating cupcakes. The book has a couple of introductory chapters covering what materials you will need in your armoury. This is followed by 10 Units, or labs, each one covering a different theme or technique.

The pictures are clear and simple. There are often step-by-step which really helps with some of the techniques if you are unfamiliar. The techniques themselves start off at the very basic such as applying your frosting with a spatula, to candying your own fruit, so there is something here for all levels.

I whipped up a dozen vanilla cupcakes (there is a recipe in the book, but I used my own), and some buttercream and had a go at a few of the different techniques. Interestingly, for me at least, is that I have used buttercream or fondant to decorate cakes, but never really thought about using fondant on a cupcake. I had a bit of a DUH! moment.

The best technique I learned, which I tried (and I need practice) was using stamps and food colouring to print a design on your fondant. I shall be using this again, and may even try it on cookies. If you enjoy making cupcakes, or want to give it a go for the first time, this is a great book to start you off.

Here is a picture of my attempts inspired by this book.

cupcakes

Cupcake Decorating Lab is available now in paperback or kindle editions from Quarry

Author:

Leave me a comment...

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.