Buttercream attempts

Okay, so I have had a couple of days to really practice some recipes. First of all I tried Vanilla and Chocolate Marble cupcakes. Half of them with vanilla buttercream icing and the other half with chocolate buttercream icing. Obviously vanilla was straight forward; the chocolate buttercream consisted of simmering double cream, adding it to plain chocolate to melt and then adding the usual buttercream ingredients. Was almost like a ganache I suppose?! Biggest mistake I made was not letting the unsalted butter become room temperature (as it had been in fridge!) so it just would not blend with the icing sugar. I ended up having to sieve the lumps through to try and make it smoother!!

Eventually I got to piping it onto the cupcakes. Getting to grips with the piping bag was a feat within itself! I have a couple of pictures of my best attempts. (You can see in the chocolate icing a few lumps of butter!)

The actual flavour of the cake and icing was really nice. Cake was moist and flavoursome.

My next attempt was my own combination of flavours. I am obsessed with chocolate lime sweets, so decided to make a chocolate sponge with lime buttercream icing. I used a chocolate cupcake recipe from my Primrose Bakery book and then adapted a lemon buttercream icing to a lime version. This time turned out a lot better. Only downfall was my cakes sunk in the middle slightly, so may have to adjust my timings slightly next time. Piping the buttercream was a lot easier too. I added three tablespoons of lime juice and then some green colouring just to give it a more lime "feel" even though they look yellow in the pictures!

When I next ice some cupcakes I'm not going to ice them as flat, I always think they look a bit better with a bit of height!

People's verdicts were very positive, everyone said that the lime icing wasn't too overpowering which I was a tad worried about.

Will hopefully have another week of happy baking!