Decorating Cupcakes Using Royal Icing Transfers

A friend asked me to make cupcakes with the number "18" on them for her daughter's 18th birthday celebration.  I didn't want to pipe the 18's with icing because I didn't think they would look uniform enough, so I decided to make the "18" using royal icing.  I love the uniformity and the dimension these gives to the cupcake.

 Here's how I made these:

1.  Find a font type and size of the numbers you want to place on the cupcake and print them out on paper.
2.  Tear out strips of waxed paper and place the paper with the printed number underneath the waxed paper where you want to pipe.
3.  Using stiff royal icing and a small tip such as a PME #1.5, pipe the outline of the number.  Make sure there are no gaps in your outline.  Slide the printed number underneath the waxed paper and repeat the outlining until you've piped the desired number of outlined numbers.
4.  Fill in the outlines with flood consistency royal icing and let dry overnight.  If you are using the same color to outline and flood, you do not need to wait for the outline to dry before you flood.
5.  Once dry, carefully peel the number from the waxed paper.  I used a small, thin offset spatula to help loosen the number from the waxed paper.  Make extra, because a few may break.
6.  Ice cupcakes and set the number on top.  And voila!  Cute cupcakes!

Filling a Cake with Lemon Curd or Jam

When filling a cake with something soft like lemon curd or jam, it helps to have a couple of tricks up your sleeve so that the filling doesn't ooze out when you place the second cake layer on top.

For Lemon Curd:

Place your cake in the center of the cake board which has been lined with 6" strips of plastic wrap or waxed paper or parchment paper around the edges. This is to keep the cake board clean while you are frosting the cake. For the sake of recycling, I re-use the plastic wrap which I used to double-wrap and freeze the cake layers. Only place the plastic around the edges so that they are easy to pull out from under the cake when the cake is completed.

Place some buttercream icing in a large piping bag fitted with a large (3/4" opening) round or star tip and pipe a border of icing around the perimeter of the cake layer.

Spread the lemon curd inside the buttercream walls which you have created, but no higher.

Place the second cake layer on top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until buttercream is firm, about 20 minutes. Then frost the cake as you normally would, trying not to press down on the top of the cake too much, which would force some of the lemon curd out of the middle. Refrigerate the completed cake until one hour before serving to let the buttercream soften a bit. Refrigerate any leftovers (because of the lemon curd filling).

For a Jam-Filled Cake:

The process is essentially the same, except that I spread a very thin layer of buttercream on the bottom cake layer to prevent any of the jam from seeping into the cake. The layer of jam is not intended to be as thick as the lemon curd, so my walls are smaller. I used a smaller round tip with about a 3/8" opening to create the walls here.

Spread the jam on the inside of buttercream wall, place the top layer and continue icing as you would any layer cake. The cake filled with jam can stay at room temperature for up to 2 days.

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