Sugar And Crumbs Nifty Nozzles | Part 1

A few weeks ago Sugar And Crumbs launched their 2016 blog programme, an opportunity for bloggers who love baking to try their unique products and be creative. I was very lucky to be sent some exciting pieces from their baking collection, I've decided to do my post in three parts as I have a few different recipes i want to share with you! Sugar and Crumbs are a UK family run business who specialise in natural flavoured ingredients, their products are free from gluten, dairy and nuts as well as being both artificial flavour and presevative free.

To make these cupcakes I used their natural flavoured Raspberry Ripple icing sugar. Although it's already flavoured all their icing sugars are white so that you can colour them yourself, I love that idea. The smell from this packet when I opened it was amazing, I was just hit with this yummy aroma of raspberry ripple ice cream but it wasn't an intense, fake overpowering smell like some flavourings you can buy. I straight away had to try some, no messing around here! It tastes exactly how it smells and to be honest I could quite happily of eaten it straight from the bag, I didn't but it took some restraint. I also adore the bright pink packaging with cupcakes on, very girly.

Sugar and Crumbs recently added these swifty Nifty Nozzles to there collection, I have never seen anything like this before they are such a novelty. I know every cupcake baker would love to get their hands on these. Don't be fooled though they are not the easiest thing to get the hang of, well actually it did get easier the more practice I had but I was very blase about this nozzle, I fully expected it to come out perfect the first time. In hindsight that was pretty silly since everything takes a bit of practice, you can't be good at everything on the first try. 

I was sent the 10 Petal Rose nozzle which I was so pleased about since it was the one I wanted to try out the most and it really does make the most beautiful roses. You do need to make sure your buttercream is the perfect consistency though, I was lucky that mine wasn't to stiff but also not fluffy or to soft so that it falls within seconds. 

To go with the petal rose is a leaf decorating tip for creating leaves, obviously. It's a great little tip though as it does make great shaped leaves to fill in between the roses. You can make them as big or as small as you want. Again it took a bit of getting used to but was easy once you get the hang of it, you just need to make sure there's no air bubbles in the icing bag.

Onto the baking process! 

I've shared my basic cupcake recipe a few times on my blog but I'll pop it in here again and how I used the nifty nozzle to create these little petals.

You will need -

170g unsalted butter or margarine (I like Stork!) 

170g caster sugar

3 medium eggs

170g self raising flour

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Splash of milk

250g unsalted butter (for the buttercream)

500g Sugar And Crumbs icing sugar 

12 cupcake cases

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees celsius before you start and line a muffin tray with your cases. I went with these cute little flower pots but any decent sized case is fine.

If you have a mixer you can pop all the ingredients in together and just mix for about 5 minutes, but if not then cream the butter and sugar together first before adding the eggs. Next up is the flour which you should add a little at a time to ensure your kitchen isn't completely covered in white dust and you don't end up looking like Casper! Then add in the vanilla and just a splash of milk, you should then have the perfect consistency.

I like to use an ice cream scoop to transfer my batter to the cases because then your roughly using the same amount in every one.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown, it helps to use a skewer to check they are done by popping it into the middle of the cake, if it comes out clean they are good to go! 

Now for the tricky bit, I mean I know my flowers didn't come out perfect but it was a first attempt! They got better as time went on, you should of seen the first one I iced haha. 

So once the cakes are cool or even whilst your waiting for them to cool down, you can make up the buttercream frosting. I like to start by whisking the softened butter for about 5 minutes so it's smooth, you can either add the whole 500g bag of icing sugar (a bit at a time mind you!) for an intense flavour or use 250g of Sugar and Crumbs with 250g of plain icing sugar to dilute the flavour slightly, it's also a great way to save some for another time. Sometimes if my icing is a little dense still I add a tablespoon of milk just to loosen it up slightly. 

Now it's time to colour your icing your desired shade, I like to use Wilton gels as they don't change the consistency of the icing, remember to put a couple of spoonfuls of frosting to the side so you colour them green for the leaves. I covered my cakes with a very thin layer of pink frosting with a palette knife so the flowers would stick better, which turned out to be a great idea. The remaining frosting you just pop into a piping bag with the nozzle and pipe on each flower. I learnt you need to place the nozzle directly onto the cake and you will also need to clean the nozzle after you've piped each flower, it's a faff but a must! You can then just add little leaves between the flowers with the leftover frosting. 

You can find Sugar and Crumbs icing collection on their website and I also saw that Amazon sell some too! They do so many yummy flavours, in fact I've just ordered myself the pineapple and banana split ones to use soon! The 500g bags are £3.49 or you can buy them in bulk (2.5kg!) for £14.50. The brilliant Nifty Nozzles are also available on their site, they retail at £5.99 each or you can buy a set of 8 for £28.

Keep an eye out for my next Sugar and Crumbs instalment in a few weeks :)

Until Next Time xo 

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