Frosting, Frosting, Frosting

Well, first off…HAPPY 60th Birthday to our Lizzie! Great captain, RWR organizer and author extraordinaire (can’t wait for the book to launch)! In honour of Liz’s birthday, we threw a quasi-surprise party up at Paper Daisy’s in Erin, ON. The plan was to make a big cupcake tree in the barn where we could load it up with candles and have frosting and décor stuff available so that everyone could frost as they liked after the birthday gal blew out her candles.

Linda put me in charge of the frosting. = O

First of all, I’ve never made this stuff before.
Second of all, I wasn’t sure how many people would be there.
Third of all, I like to taste test my food along the way for quality control purposes. =P

Well, first you’ve got to have at least a chocolate and a vanilla frosting.
So I got that online after an extensive search and reading other people’s ratings.

Then I bought bags upon bags of icing sugar, a huge bag of top grade cocoa powder, 4 blocks of butter and 2 of shortening. Are you getting sick yet?

Saturday morning I started to make this stuff and doubled the recipes because I figured we’d have at least 75 cupcakes to frost. What do I know about frosting???
Of course, I had to make 4 batches of butter, shortening, icing sugar and cocoa and taste test along to way to make sure it was ok. Oh yeah, did I mention it all comes together with a cup of whipping cream per batch too?

So feeling quite sick and exhausted, I packed up the 5 huge tubs of this stuff to transport out to Erin.

At 1:30pm was already running late and was hungry since I had had not breakfast or lunch so I decided to get something on the way over. Unfortunately the only place I could stop to get a bite was at Wendy’s. Once Classic Single Combo- sans onions – later, I swear I could feel my heart pounding harder just to force blood through my now clogged arteries.

Luckily I spent the rest of the afternoon running around, decorating, cooking and cleaning, and got to have some very posh nosh (and healthy might I add)! The cupcake tree and frosting were a hit, however we barely put a dent in the mountains of frosting. I made entirely too much. There were quite a few cupcakes left over too so I took them over to church on Sunday and let everyone frost them there too for $1 each to fundraise for our church retreat in August.

Despite all this, I still have tonnes of pink, blue, violet, and yellow vanilla frosting in the trunk of my car. I was fortunate enough that the 6:14 Igniters wanted to take the chocolate frosting with them – it was very fudgey and yummy!

Lessons learned –
1. Never double a recipe if you’re not sure of how much you actually need.
2. There is much guilt in throwing out the unused frosting that is a result of you doubling or tripling a recipe.
3. Sampling frosting as you make it is pure torture…and pure fat. Gross.
4. For those who get to eat the final product – Frosting totally puts a huge smile on your face =). I saw adults get just as excited as the kids when they found out they’d get to have it on their cupcakes (Some just dug in with a spoon and ditched the cupcakes altogether – hahaha)!