Why are you Swedish? A question that relates to frosting a cupcake.

I just came back from The Tallest Man on Earth--Kristian Matsson's concert. While his music is still hot and steamy in my mind, I need to write down a memorable quote from him. In between songs, he said, people ask him what his favorite color, when he started playing, why he is Swedish (really?), but no one ever ask him how much he practice.

That sentence hit me, hard. No one ask me how much I practice chez ma cuisine. Often times people look up the sky to admire a shooting star, but they don't think about how much time it took the comet to form.

I don't like to blog about failures, even though my very first post was on how I failed to make tang zhong bread. Even though that post captured a series of failed attempt before finally succeeding, they were all written under one post, which eventually showed beautiful white sandwich bread. The macaron post was a similar scenario. Notice how I only post one photo of cracked macaron? There were countless uglier batches that I was too embarrassed to share.

Right now I'm practicing my pipping skills. I have some moist, some crumbly, some velvety cupcake recipes, but my ugly frosting ruin the dessert at the end. Sure it tastes good, but presentation is as important as flavor.

I'm not there yet. Of the twelve cupcakes I made, this is has the most satisfying look from the side. From the top, it looks like a pile of poop on a black cake. Brown on black are not appealing when the frosting is piled up in layers like poop.

Later that day I made more frosting to practice. I wasn't paying too much attention on the recipe, so the frosting was watery. Despite that, I still can't overcome my poop-like shape. I think I am pipping the second layer too much on the inner rim of the first layer. If the second layer is more on top of the first layer and move slightly inward on the third layer, perhaps it would lose the poopie shape.

I will report back when I practice a little more tomorrow. I also bought a closed star tip because part of me blame the French pastry tip! Until then...