what is this icing called?

[runwithme]

I only know 'butter cream' but its not that! Any idea what it is? I'm talking about the cupcakes in the image.

Does look like buttercream to me.

Looks like coloured buttercream to me! It looks like it's piped, which is why it's likely to be buttercream. Any reason why you DONT think it's buttercream?

Yep that’s just coloured buttercream piped

That’s fondant icing on the big cake.

Could be Swiss buttercream, but you can achieve similar results with a standard buttercream.

If not buttercream is it royal icing? It tends to be stiffer for piping

Yes piped buttercream.

Ah, so its piped. Of course! My butter cream is usually whipped in a bowl and slapped on with a spoon .

It's so neat- maybe that's because its piped. I'm not very good at this cake decorating lark. Or cake making. However, cake eating comes naturally! Thanks for your help!

Could be Italian meringue buttercream - made with beaten egg whites, sugar, butter

What would you make the small bricks from- fondant?

I've just googled that, Rum, and it looks lovely! Not sure a bunch of 6-7 year old boys would appreciate the effort, but saving that for when I become Cake Decorator Extraordinaire!

I think it is buttercream but they’ve used a plain nozzle rather than a variegated nozzle.
They may have used fondant icing sugar rather than normal icing sugar as that is believed to give a less gritty result.

For the bricks, I'd colour some white choc and use that! Much easier to get out of moulds as it sets hard

I’d probably colour that Renshaws white modelling paste the colours I wanted, it doesn’t contain gelatin whereas fondant often does and I have friends with veggie kids

Thanks DisMember. My little one has a friend who is Muslim and so wouldn't be able to have gelatin products

I made bricks for my sons cake a few years ago and used coloured white chocolate.

It’s called lurid.

I used white chocolate coloured for Lego too.