Decorated Cupcakes

          For the third session in the cake decorating course we had to take cupcakes and were taught some techniques to decorate them. I took some plain vanilla cupcakes with strawberry filling. As usual, I didn't have time to finish them in class, I completed only at home. My cupcakes were very big, so with the decoration they looked even bigger but I thought that they were decent enough to share here..

Need To Have

• All Purpose Flour - 1 cup
• Sugar - 3/4 cup
• Egg - 1
• Baking Powder - 1 teaspoon
• Baking Soda - 1 teaspoon
• Vanilla Extract - 1 teaspoon
• Salt - a pinch
• Milk - 1/2 cup
• Butter - 2 tablespoon
• Oil - 2 tablespoon
• Strawberry Preserves - for the filling

For Icing - used thin consistency of basic icing (confectioner's sugar, shortening, water and vanilla) and food colors.

Method
          Well, it's a basic cupcake, beat the egg, add the sugar, vanilla extract and salt, mix, add the butter, oil and milk, mix everything well. Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda, gradually mix in to the wet ingredients. Line the muffin pan with cupcake liners and pour the batter, 3/4th way up, bake at 350F for 25 to 30 mins. Cool the cupcakes completely. For filling the cupcakes, you should have a piping bag or a heavy duty ziploc bag and a long thin tip nozzle. Or you can drill a hole or use a apple corer to remove a little in the center, fill it up and cover with a piece of the cake and then do the icing. The proportions for thin icing is 1 pound confectioners sugar : 1 cup vegetable shortening : 1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract : 13 teaspoons of water (I still have to work out the proportions for a smaller quantity). Mix the shortening, extract and water, then slowly add the sugar and mix it till creamy with a hand mixer and then you add your colors.

Sending it to Food Corner for the Midweek Fiesta event and
                to Sumee's Culinary Bites for Vardhini's Bake Fest event.

Note
I think you need at least some basic stuff like the piping bags and a couple of different tips to do the decoration.