Novice cupcake decoration question

[ShoutyMom]

I am baking cupcakes for the school bake sale to support the Breast Cancer awareness campaign. I did a trial run last week. I made a cream cheese icing (whipped Philly + thick cream + icing sugar) and spooned it on top, then drew a pink ribbon using Dr Oetker's ready icing tube. It was delicious but by evening the pink ribbon was melting into the cream cheese icing. What can I do to prevent this? Not in UK so availability of ingredients is a bit limited.

I just use soft butter and then double that weight off sieved icing sugar and add food colouring if required. And pipe.

If ingredients are limited, I would colour the cream cheese icing with the stuff rom the icing tube so that all the topping is pink.

Cream cheese icing is notoriously unstable. Does it have to be cream cheese or could you use normal buttercream instead? And/or do the ribbon in fondant or marzipan, as Horrace suggests?

If it is for a bake sale I would use buttercream and then use the ready icing to make the decoration.

Ik26, it sounds good, but I don't have piping bags, was looking for something spoonable.
BellaVita,I was thinking about it, but was keen to make the ribbon as it's the symbol of the Breast Cancer awareness campaign

You don't need a piping bag, you can spread it on with a knife, smooth it out with a knife and then add the decoration. The reason they blended together is the amount of moisture in the cream cheese frosting dissolving the pink icing.

Horace - good idea, will have a nose around to see if I can find fondant/marzipan. Not keen on marshmallow as it isn't vegetarian.
Pilcrow, Pikkewyn - do you have a tried and tasted (and easy) buttercream recipe?

I use very soft room temp butter - 200g butter to 400 g of icing sugar, if it is too soft a a little more icing sugar, if it is too stiff add a tiny amount of boiling water. Beat if very well for about 5 minutes to get smooth light and creamy buttercream.

If you're goig to make cut out shapes to put on the top out of fondant, do it several day before you need them and leave them out to dry/harden, then they are less likely to flop on the buttercream.

the other thing you could do is wait until the buttercream has crusted a little bit before putting the coloured decoration on.
Are you able to buy either ready made royal icing or a box of dried royal icing to make up yourself. If so, you could colour it red and pipe the ribbon design onto greaseproof or baking paper then when it is hard transfer it to the iced cupcake. You can make a piping bag yourself from a triangle of greaseproof/baking paper.

Oh oh isn't marzipan made of almonds (excuse my ignorance). If so, that's out as school bake sale needs to be nut-free.

Plenty of good ideas here. Will make the buttercream, let it set a bit then will pipe the pink ribbon on tomorrow morning just before going to school. Will post back on how it went. Thank you all!

One more question. How much buttercream to ice 12 normal sized cupcakes?

I usually just use one block of butter 250g with 500g icing sugar, 1tsp vanilla, and have some left over.

So if you want to be really exact prob 200g butter/400 sugar.

Beat butter on its own first, add sugar bit by bit, so it doesnt become too stiff. If it does, just add tiny bit of milk to loosen it.

Thank you all. The buttercream icing with pink ribbon turned out great. My daughter loved the taste of the buttercream and I found a Youtube video showing how to use a ziploc bag for a homemade piping bag.
Now if only my cupcakes had turned out as well as they did in my trial run :-( Ah well, need more practice.

Bluesky That is a lot of buttercream for 12 cupcakes.

I would normally use 3 oz butter and 6 oz icing sugar. I don't pipe buttercream onto cupcakes any more because it makes too much topping and most people scrape it off or don't buy it the cakes the first place because of the amount of icing on. So I just spread the icing on top to add interest, but not make the cake over-rich and overwhelming.

I support most of the food/craft fairs round here and the number of cupcake stalls with most cakes unsold is depressing. IMO over-iced cupcakes have had their day.

You could always make fondant and then the bow from a loop of red liquorice. Sainbos ones are pinkish rather than red. Or buy some pink fondant and cut and loop strips.

Actually I made icing with 100g butter and 200g sugar, it was plenty. I did try to spread it on but I couldn't make it look nice and presentable - but that's my lack of talent rather than the buttercream itself to blame!
Will try fondant next time!
For the cupcakes themselves I used a basic sponge recipe (equal quantities butter, SR flour, sugar, eggs + vanilla and baking soda). Will start a separate thread on how to make the cupcakes light and moist rather than dense and stodgy.

Buttercream tip

Spread a thin layer of buttercream on the cake and let it set in the fridge for a bit. This is called the crumb layer. Then spread another layer of buttercream on top of the first and it will go on easily and not be full of crumbs.

Ooh nice one Bunbaker, I can see how you chose your MN name :-)

I read it somewhere and it works.