Wanting a recipe for piping bag icing

lmk, Nov 12, 5:02pm
Love making cupcakes and haven't tried icing them with a piping bag before. Would like an easy, fail safe recipe for icing you can use in a piping bag.One that will set fairly firm (meant to be a super hot day tomorrow when I want to ice them!)

gardie, Nov 12, 5:07pm
Royal Icing sets very hard.lightly bet an egg white and then mix in sifted icing sugar until correct consistency.

Chocolate Butter icing - melt about 30 grams of butter then stir in 1 tbsp cocoa until a smooth paste is formed.Put in about 1 1/2 cups icing sugar, mix a little then pop in some boiled water, a little at a time until the correct consistency.Keep this on the thicker side as you can microwave it to soften it.It sets pretty quickly though.
Hope that helps.

lmk, Nov 12, 5:13pm
Thanks gardie :) I guess I could make this and add food colour instead of the cocoa and just alter the icing sugar/ water to get it right.

tortenz, Nov 12, 5:28pm
Hi lmk,

I just use the butter icing from the edmonds cookbook.But you can use any icing in piping bags... buttercream, ganache, etc.

I like buttercream because you can make it any colour or flavour by what you add to it.

Don't use royal icing on cupcakes.

If you want to check out some great ways to flavour and decorate cupcakes, I've just posted some on my blog: http://tortenz.wordpress.com/

The top 3 posts are cupcake related

tortenz, Nov 12, 5:30pm
Oops... top 5 posts are cupcake related!Maybe I should move on to something else!

lmk, Nov 12, 5:34pm
Thanks tortenz :) It sounds like it is a buttercream (or similar) icing that I want. Was just a bit worried about a meltdown with the heat we are having. Love making cupcake they are so easy and heaps of ways to decorate them, have lots of ideas for Christmas! Some GREAT ideas on your blog have often thought about doing one myself but don't know if I have the time!

tortenz, Jul 30, 6:45pm
I had some cupcakes sitting on the bench under a tea towel in the sun and the icing from the edmonds book held up fine... so it shouldn't be a problem :)

They are definitely the most impressive of all the baked items (I think!)