These are a few of the birthday cakes I’ve made for my daughter.
I love to decorate birthday cakes for my kids. It seems more personal if Mom can do it herself instead of picking one up at the store. The icing that I use is the recipe that I want to share with you. It is a really yummy icing, but low on sugar, so you don’t end up with a bunch of kids with a sugar high. This recipe is one that was given to me by my sister-in-law (Thanks, Dana!).
Ingredients:
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 package instant vanilla pudding
Directions:
Start whipping the cream, as you would for whipped topping. Once it starts to get fluffy, add the package of instant pudding mix. The mix will thicken up instantly. You can add powdered sugar & vanilla to your whipped cream before adding the pudding package, but I have never found a need to do that. From here, you can add your colouring gels or food colour (just don’t do too much liquid colouring, as it will start to thin down your frosting).
If you wish to do a chocolate icing, you can use a package of instant chocolate pudding instead. I did that one year for a teddy bear, he turned out a wonderful brown colour (I just couldn’t find a picture of him now).
NOTE: I have been able to pipe this frosting without a problem, but you will want to work with small batches in your piping bag, because if it gets too warm from your hands, it will get too soft to pipe. You will want to keep this frosting (and the cake you’ve frosted) refrigerated.
This is a great icing, not too sweet at all. My SIL makes it for all her cakes, she does some spectacular cakes.
She has mentioned either adding custard powder or Cream of Tarter to firm it up for piping, I will ask her.
Wendy, please let me know if you find out the answer, I’d love to add that. I’m lucky, no summer birthday parties here, but I’d like to make this a little more stable, if possible.
Thanks!
I think I might give this frosting a try soon, I agree, some frosting recipes are just too sweet! Although heavy whipping cream isn’t the greatest for you, but something’s gotta give. Thanks for posting…did you ever hear about the cornstarch if it would thicken it? Also, do you frost the cake with this frosting as well as pipe and decorate?
Hi Katskitchen!
Let me know if you try it, I’d love to see what you can do with it!
I never did hear back if the cornstarch would help stabalize it, but I’m thinking that it would. I’ve always frosted my cakes a few hours before needing them, and then refrigerated them until the party. I have both frosted a cake with it, and piped it, but if using it only to frost, I would maybe even cut back on the pudding mix a bit, so it’s more like whipped cream, and not quite as thick. We love this icing though, at least it’s edible and no on is scraping it off their cake.
Oops, sorry, custard powder! That is what I would try adding to stiffen it up a bit, not cornstarch. Man, I wish blogger allowed you to modify your own comments.
Got some comments this morning and realized I had forgotten to ask my SIL so I phoned her.
She uses Cream of Tarter to firm it up a bit and chills the icing slightly prior to putting in the bag. She does pipe it and this seems to work.
HTH
Wonderful, thanks for checking for us, Wendy! Cream of Tarter is it!! I’ll remember that for next time!