To celebrate spring, I made these cupcakes and piped them with a delicious, yet light and fluffy, fat-free frosting.  I wanted to use a fat-free frosting to mirror the lightness of the season.  Spring is such a bright and cheerful time of the year.  The flowers start to bloom, trees turn green and everything around us comes to life with colour.  It’s also a great time of the year to start tending to the gardens again and plant more flowers.

Naturally, I had to pipe a few flower cupcakes, for what would spring be without flowers?  I made a few mini flower cupcakes.

I find this white cake recipe really delicious, moist and soft.  With one recipe I was able to make two dozen medium size cupcakes and one dozen mini size cupcakes.  I suppose if I wasn’t as generous in scooping the batter into each muffin cup, and if I had decided to make them all medium size, the recipe could yield three dozen medium size cupcakes.

The fluffy, light, fat-free, cloud-like frosting is one of my favourites.  It is made by very slowly pouring hot syrup made of water, sugar, cream of tartar and a small amount of corn syrup, over three egg whites while whipping the egg whites at medium low speed.  On high heat, the syrup is first brought to a rapid boil.  I use a candy thermometer to measure the temperature.  When the syrup reaches around 225 F, I start whipping the egg whites first on low then increasing to high until the egg whites start to take shape.  When the syrup reaches around 230 F, I reduce the mixer speed to medium low and start to pour the syrup in a very small trickle into the egg whites.  I pour only about a third of the syrup, then return the pot to heat the syrup up back to 230 F.  While the syrup is heating, I switch the mixer speed back up to medium high.

This photo was taken after pouring the first third of the syrup.  The frosting is still soft, but has started to increase in volume.  The bowl will be hot to the touch as shown by the heat condensation on the sides of the bowl.

Once the syrup reaches 230 F again, I reduce the mixer speed back to medium low and slowly pour about ½ of the remaining syrup.  I repeat the procedure and return the pot back to the heat and switch the mixer speed back up to high.  Again when the syrup reaches 230 F, I pour the last of the remaining syrup over the frosting with the mixer speed on medium low.  Once all the syrup has been poured, I gradually increase the mixer speed all the way up to high and whip the frosting for about 5 – 7 minutes until the bowl has cooled to the touch, and the frosting has reached stiff peaks and lost its shine.  I make sure to add the vanilla sometime while the frosting is whipping on high.  In this photo, all the syrup has been poured in.  You can see that the frosting is thicker because of the marks made by the beater.

This photo was taken after about 4 minutes of beating at high speed after all the syrup had been poured in.  There is less condensation on the sides of the bowl as it starts to cool off.  The marks made by the beater on the frosting become even more pronounced.

This frosting is almost done.  You can see a few stiff peaks next to the beater.  I continued to beat just a few minutes more to make sure the frosting was stiff and thick all the way through the bottom and not just in the surface.  How long the frosting is whipped will depend largely on the mixer, but as a rule of thumb, I whip the frosting between 5 – 7 minutes on high after all the syrup has been added.  Cues will be, the frosting will be very thick all the way through and will hold stiff peaks.  The bowl should also be cool to the touch.

The frosting has reached stiff peaks, is very thick and fluffy and the condensation on the sides of the bowl has disappeared as the bowl has cooled down.  At this point, since I wanted to have 3 different colours of frosting, I removed about 2/3 of the frosting from the bowl, left about 1/3 to tint with a few drops of blue food colours.  I divided the 2/3 frosting I removed from the bowl in half in separate bowls.  I added a few drops of pink food colour to one bowl and yellow to the other.  I also made sure to mix each bowl thoroughly to distribute the colour evenly.

It’s amazing just three egg whites and a small amount of syrup can yield so much frosting.  I had 4 piping bags filled with frosting. Once I had all my piping bags lined up, it took just a matter of minutes to frost the cupcakes.

This is how I filled the icing bags:

I used tip 21 to pipe frosting on the mini cupcakes. I started on the outer edge of the cupcake and swirled the frosting going round about 3 or 4 times until I reached the desired height.

To pipe the frosting on the medium cupcakes, I used the 1M tip.

Again, I just used the same technique starting at the outer edge of the cupcake going round to build a huge mound of frosting. And what would cupcakes be without having a few with pink frosting?

Tip 21 was used to pipe this frosting on this cupcake.

It’s a field of cupcakes.  This is one field I wouldn’t mind running through. To pipe flowers, I used tip 103 for the petals, starting on the outer edge with the narrow part of the tip facing outward.  For the centre of the flowers I used tip 21 starting at the middle going round twice. 

Spring is all about light and airiness and I thought the fat-free frosting really went well with the cupcakes.  The cake part itself was so good I could have had the cupcakes by themselves un-frosted.  The cupcakes were consumed immediately so I didn’t have to worry about storage.  I’ll have to come up with more things befitting spring.  Until then…

 Ingredients