Whipped Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting with Red and White Stripes

Today was my day to bring a ‘treat’ for one of my classes.  To me that means, ‘bake something’ for my classmates.

I’m always talking about how much I love to bake, so often times they ask about it.  I usually have some kind of excuse like “I was so busy studying this weekend, I didn’t do any baking!”  In reality, I should be saying to them, “I baked cookies this weekend and didn’t save you any!”

Shame on me.

Well, now if they’re reading this, they’re likely to be more inclined to push the issue.

{Good thing I just found the flat beater for my Kitchenaid that had been missing for nearly a month!}

With that in hand, I set out to make a perfectly chocolate cupcake with red-and-white peppermint cream cheese frosting.

Here’s my very own recipe for the frosting. This was also my first attempt at it, so I was praying the whole time that it came together and, it worked!

Whipped Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting

{Makes 12 cupcakes.  Easily doubled.  Piping is a breeze.}

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese *Don’t skimp and get low-fat or fat free kind.  You will thank me later.
• 1 cup white sugar
• ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon pure mint extract
• 1 ½ cups heavy cream

Use your Kitchenaid mixer with the Whisk attachment to whip the cream and cream of tartar.    Spatula it out into a huge bowl.  Then put your flat Beater attachment onto your mixer {no need to clean the bowl}, and beat the cream cheese, sugar, and mint.  When that’s nice and fluffy, add your cream cheese mixture into the whipped cream, folding gently but thoroughly, using a wooden spoon or a spatula.

{No stand mixer?   No problem – your electric mixer will do just fine for both whipping the creams and beating the cream cheese. Just make sure to do them separately.}

It’s done!  Let me show you my piping skillz.

I’ve seen frosting stripes a few times online and wanted to try a new technique.  I cut the tip off of my piping bag, and used a Wilton 1M tip.  Using a small paintbrush and some red food gel, I painted about five or six long, dark stripes.

pastry tip with gel paint stripes

{Your cupcakes must be completely cooled before piping.  It doesn’t take long.  Your impatience will otherwise give you frosting that slides right off your cake!}

What I learned from making this recipe:

• Everyone loves the frosting.  It’s light {no butter} so with a light cake, it’s the perfect combination for a non-filling treat.  {After eating one, I overheard my professor say something like “hashtag frosting,” which made some of us laugh.  I’m so glad this was a hit!}

• I was pretty heavy handed with the food gel, since it was my first time with this method.  Just a few dark stripes of food color in the bag striped about 35 cupcakes.  But the first few were very dark and unappetizing, and the last few were so faint that the color was barely noticeable.  It was that middle ‘sweet spot’ of about 25 cupcakes that looked the prettiest.  {I’m sorry I do not have pictures!} Next time I make this, I’ll paint the lines, then just squeeze a fair amount of frosting back into the bowl.  Or I may just make the paint lines a bit lighter.

• My cupcakes caved inward a bit.  I used the first few wonky ones as practice, but using the Wilton 1M tip covered them over really easily and no one noticed.  It was my first time doing roses, I usually do swirly caps.  {Start in the middle and pipe outward for a flat rose.  Start on the edges and pipe inward for a swirly cap.}  I love how the roses came out.

It’s Superbowl weekend!  Cupcakes on your gameplan?  You can try this with just a few red and blue stripes, and you’ll be a hit with whoever your crowd is rooting for!

Happy weekend!

xo,

Jen