How to Decorate Cupcakes for a Derby
Every first weekend of May, the city of Louisville, Kentucky goes horse crazy, and one of the staples of the Kentucky Derby season are the parties. A derby party can be authenticated by serving traditional Kentucky fare, or something special like derby-inspired cupcakes depicting recognizable derby scenes, which will bring a smile to the faces of your guests and sweetness to their mouths. Cupcakes baked using Kentucky's home brew, bourbon, will please the harshest cupcake critic. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Pastry decorating bag
- Decorating tips
- Frosting
- Food coloring
- Spatula
- Cupcake tin
- Cupcake liners
Instructions
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Add chocolate chips, coconut or mint to your batter of choice. Ingredients added to cupcakes should be light, as the cakes themselves are meant to be light and fluffy. The combination of mint and bourbon will mimic the taste of the iconic derby drink, the Mint Julep. Use your imagination to come up with other dynamic flavors.
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Use food coloring to color the frosting. Scoop frosting into a small bowl. Add a few drops of food coloring. Mix the frosting and add more coloring as needed. Mint Julep cupcakes look inviting with lime green frosting and a fresh mint leaf on top. Add more green food coloring for a darker color; use this to act as the background for cupcakes featuring horse decorations. Remember you may need several different colors of frosting to complete your decorating.
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Use a spoon or spatula to apply green frosting to the top of each cupcake.
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Use a spatula to scoop black or white frosting into a pastry decorating bag. Attach a decorating tip. Tips are available in different shapes and sizes, but you can execute most designs with a basic round tip.
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Hold the decorating bag just above of the tip and at the top of the bag. Use your dominant hand to hold the bag near the tip. This hand will control the flow of frosting.
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Place the tip near the cupcake top. Squeeze the frosting out of the bag using your dominant hand. Use the hand at the top of the bag to send frosting toward the tip. Slowly draw a horse on the cupcake top; it might be helpful to work from a picture. Drawing the legs of each horse in a different phase of running is a nice touch if you have the skill to execute it.
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Tips & Warnings
Make a few extra cupcakes to practice decorating. You can set the blooper cupcakes aside as snacks for the kids without losing food for your party.
Look up some pictures of Kentucky Derby competitors. Use food coloring to pay tribute to the jersey colors of your favorite for the year.
In the absence of professional baking equipment, you can use a knife tip to draw a small horse on the top of each cupcake. This method is less exact. Let the hanging tip of the chocolate frosting touch the cupcake where you want to the horse's head. Slowly draw the image of a horse.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit cupcakes image by Mat Hayward from Fotolia.com
