Butter cream and varieties (strawberry/ lemon)

Ingredients

• 200grams of softened unsalted butter or vegetable shortening
• 500 grams of icing sugar
• Vanilla essence (strawberry or lemon essence)
• food colouring a few drops
• 2 tbsp of milk

Method

Step 1

When making icing, it is always better to take out the butter from fridge at least 2 hours so that it gets softened and can easily be beaten/ whisked. Butter can be completely replaced with vegetable shortening to achieve a white smooth butter cream effect on the cakes.

Step 2

Whisk the butter with a beater and add icing sugar in small quantities at a time. Add in vanilla essence and two tablespoons of milk and whisk. Put the prepared butter cream in the piping bag and pipe it over the cup cakes.

Variation

Any flavour and colour gel or powder can be added to achieve the desired colour or flavouring to the above recipe, please note that liquid food colouring should be avoided as it will thin out the icing and desired swirls cannot be thus attained.

Tip for piping

It is always better to use a big or huge piping nozzle for butter cream as it can easily and smoothly come out and always cover the mouth of piping nozzle with a damp cloth.