Tips in the Kitchen: How to Pipe Frosting

There is no recipe here but I wanted to share with you these adorable little pumpkin muffins we made in class last week at work. I am a preschool teacher and my kids are 3. I was a little afraid that they wouldn't like the frosting because it was cream cheese frosting. Believe it or not, they LOVED the it! The wanted more and more so I had to make a huge batch! I've given you all my recipe before, seen here. For the kids, I added a little bit extra powdered sugar (they changed "Sugar, sugar!!!" so I didn't really have a choice) to make it a little more sweet. The best part about cream cheese frosting is that it is so versatile. You can use it on pretty much any type of cake and it always tastes delicious!

Anyways, what I really want to do here is teach you an easy way how to pipe frosting onto a cupcake or muffin. We are not all Martha or Ina and I don't exactly have the steadiest of hands. I tried using one of those fancy piping kits but it was just a big mess. So for those of us who just want to make something pretty but keep it simple, here you go. To pipe the frosting, I filled a medium ziplock bag with the icing. There is NO need to waste money on official piping bags; they're just ziplock bags without the ziplock! Make sure that the icing has been in the fridge for at least 1 hour, and no more than 3 (you still want to be able to manipulate it). Next, I made a small slit in the bottom corner of the bag with a pair of clean scissors, and made swirls on the top of each muffin. If you have the attachments for different shapes from a kit, pop those into the bag and use them! Now, remember, make sure you let the muffins or cupcakes cool for at least 30 minutes before piping or else the icing will melt right off. I hope this helped and you enjoy it as much as my students did!!!