This is my first post, so please be gentle...



First of all, I'm an amateur. I mean, I can cook a great cupcake but this post is about the icing/frosting on my cupcakes. I made some basic sponge for my cupcakes with some slight recipe adjustments for flavour and moistness. I then used the below recipe for a basic buttercream icing/frosting...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/basicbuttericing_73263
Code:Ingredients
140g/5oz butter, softened
280g/10oz icing sugar
1-2 tbsp milk
few drops food colouring

Preparation method
Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft. Add half of the icing sugar and beat until smooth.
Add the remaining icing sugar and one tablespoon of the milk and beat the mixture until creamy and smooth. Beat in the milk, if necessary, to loosen the mixture.
Stir in the food colouring until well combined.I did not use liquid food colouring. I did use the gel/paste that I normally use to colour icing without making it too runny. However, for some reason, my icing still came out rather runny. I piped the buttercream onto the cupcakes and although it piped successfully, it wasn't as firm as I thought/imagined it should be and within a few minutes they did lose a slight bit of height and piping texture (sort of slumped, if that makes sense).

I didn't pipe the buttercream onto warm cupcakes, I left them to cool overnight in an airtight container so the cupcakes were at room temperature. I did use [url="http://www.bakewithstork.com/"]Stork[/url] in my buttercream rather than pure butter but then I do so in my cakes, etc and they're always great and I know of others that use it. My Stork was kept in the fridge so was chilled.

Am I using the wrong recipe for piping swirls? If not that, what else could I be doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

I would add a little more powdered sugar. Compared to your recipe, I use 2 T milk to 16 oz sugar. HTH!

Yes, I would also say add more icing sugar

Thanks to the both of you. I will add more icing sugar next time (with a tea towel covering my stand mixer to stop the massive icing sugar cloud, hehe!)

Thanks again

Welcome! And curse you for that Etsy apron link, I am officially going to be in the poor house,lol

Hi Funky
I think the problem you are having stems from using stork, I had a similar problem a while back,try using the blocks of baking butter that you find in asda or tesco that are usually about 50p per 250gm
Your recipe is fine try using half butter and half trex veg shortenig that will give a nice stiff buttercream or you could try;
250gm butter
250gm cream cheese or Trex.
1kg sifted icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
This will make a nice mellow buttercream that will peak easily and stay peaked forever.
Let me know how you get on