Strawberry Cupcakes, Chocolate Butterflies, and Buttercream Frosting (Caroline)

I have been perusing baking blogs like a maniac over the last few months and have discovered a few things. One, it's good to look at multiple recipes of the same dish and look at reviewers comments to see if anyone has actually tried the recipe, and if they have, then read what they thought. On a lot of sites, especially allrecipes.com, you'll get reviewers who will tell you what they changed about the recipe to fit their taste. If you seem to have similar taste, you now know what changes to make without having to take the time (and ingredients) to go through the process yourself. Two, it is recipe-blogging law that you must post an anecdote intermittent with pictures of your cooking/baking process and/or finished product. It doesn't matter if the story has nothing to do with cooking/baking, but it usually does.

Here's the thing. I bake on a whim. Very rarely will I think ahead of time, "Oh, I should take pictures of myself cooking/baking so I can blog about it!" It just doesn't happen. I'm trying to get better at it because, as a teenager, one of my favorite things to do was post polymer clay tutorials. Not everyone pays attention when you show them something that you did, but I discovered that showing people how to do what I did drew a lot of traffic and it made me feel good that literally hundreds of people were seeking my advice because I'd established myself as a polymer-clay Yoda. 

I love baking. I think I will love writing about baking. I also love taking pictures. I can't really say that I love photography because I'm not that serious about it, but I think I can capture a decent shot when I really want to. That being said, my baking/cooking pictures will be crappy. A) I bake at night, so, no natural light, which is what I think makes good pictures. B) Most of the pictures I take are with my phone because my camera's in the other room and I'm just that lazy. C) My kitchen gets really messy while I bake. 

Here goes. 

Two weekends ago, I made some cupcakes for Megan's birthday. They had chocolate butterflies on them. Despite my anxieties, I had a lot of fun doing this. The technique took a few tries to really get the hang of. Melting the chocolate was probably the most stressful thing for me on this one.

Of course, this was something I had seen on Pinterest and shown to Mel and Meg, who loves butterflies and whose birthday was nigh at hand. The butterflies are just melting chocolates. I was trying to find out if white melting chocolates could be dyed and apparently they can, but I just used blue chocolates that I found at a local store. If you're going to dye white chocolates, apparently liquid food coloring does not work. It "freezes up" the chocolate. You can use gel and powder. Let me know how it goes. 

The cupcakes are just a strawberry boxed cake mix. Generally, I like making the cupcakes from scratch, but when I'm doing more complicates frostings/decorations, I'll make the cake simple by using a mix so I don't get burned out just making the cake. Also, I have NEVER gotten 24 cupcakes out of a box of cake mix. It's usually about 18 cupcakes, or in this case, 12 cupcakes and one very skinny and slightly burnt round cake (as seen on the far left). Woops.

Piping frosting onto cupcakes is one of my favorite things, like, ever. And for this project specifically, I was justified in buying some new baking materials. Namely an 18" featherweight pastry bag and some tips to go with it. I used an open star tip (#1M) for these cupcakes.

For the chocolate butterflies you'll need: 

Melting chocolates of your choices in color

• Like I said, if you can't find colored melting chocolates, you can use white and add powdered or gel food coloring, not liquid. 

White non-pareils

• aka little round white sprinkles. These really do give the butterflies the finishing touch. 

Baking parchment or wax paper

Zip-lock bags and/or a small pastry bag fitted with a small round tip (I used a #5)

Toothpicks

To make the chocolate butterflies: 

1. Print this out (or draw your own) and put it under your parchment paper. The size should be about 3.25" from the top of the left wing to the bottom of the right wing, but you can change the size, of course. I don't have a pattern for this, but you'll need to pipe bodies for your butterflies, too. If you draw your own, use a marker or something that's easy to see through your parchment paper. 

2. Melt the chocolate. Since you'll be melting two different kinds of chocolate, you'll need to use either two different zip-lock bags in the microwave at 10/15 second intervals until melted, or two double boilers, or two metal/glass bowls on top of pots with a few inches of simmering water. 

3. Spoon some of each color into separate zip-lock bags or pastry bags. 

4. If using a zip-lock bag, cut a tiny hole in one corner and trace the outline of the butterfly wing with whichever chocolate you want. You can outline two wings at a time, you just risk the chocolate hardening before you can fill both in, depending on how slowly you're working. 

4. Fill in the outline, then take a toothpick and gently, slightly swirl the chocolate together, just to give it some detail. 

5. Give them a few sprinkles then let them cool! 

                                                    

For the frosting: 

1 c. (2 sticks) of softened butter 

• Like I said, I bake on a whim. I rarely have time to soften the butter the slow way, so I leave the cubes in the wrapper and pop them in the microwave at 7 second intervals, turning the butter from side to side every 7 seconds. Do this just until the butter feels soft, but if it starts to feel squishy, it's probably starting to melt. 
• If you use unsalted butter you'll need to add about 1/4 tsp of salt 

2 cups of sifted powdered sugar

• The sifting isn't absolutely necessary, but I find that it makes for a smoother frosting. I have a small wire mesh strainer with a handle that I use for sifting and it works great. 

1 tsp vanilla 

2 tbsp heavy cream

To make the frosting: 

1. Beat the butter in your kitchen-aid with the paddle attachment until it's smooth. 10 seconds or so. 

2. Add the powdered sugar half of a cup at a time while the butter is still mixing on the lowest setting. 

3. Once all the powdered sugar is in, scrape the bowl down, mix it just a little more, then add the cream and vanilla and beat it on med/high until it's fluffy. 

4. Fill your pastry bag. The trick I use for this tricky part is to hold the pastry bag in one hand, and I hold it just above the tip, then fold the rest of the bag down and over my hand/arm. I scoop the frosting right on top of the pastry bag like ice cream on a cone, then let it drop through my hand as I put more and more frosting in. 

5. Frost those cupcakes! 

                                                 

Place the wings on the cupcakes, just a little bit apart. Place the bodies between the wings and the antennae on top. And you're done!