My friends, I love Duke. So so very much.  And I especially love our rivalry with UNC.   The thing about rivalries is that it feels really earth-shatteringly horrible when you lose, but it also feels like the dawn of a new paradisiacal universe when you win… and so the loss must be risked at least twice a season.  As long as that victorious paradise is a possibility, the loss must be risked.  And I’m just so very glad that I find myself on the paradise side of things this morning…. and my heart goes out to the Carolina fans.   Sorry, guys.  I know it hurts.  But really I’m not sorry.  Whoo!  Let’s go Duke!    

Mostly, I’m glad we won because otherwise how could I post these pictures of the cupcakes I made last night?

Victory... so delicious

I’m totally proud of these.  Well first of all, that orange took me a little bit of time.  I wanted it to be not a bright cartoony orange, but closer to the actual color of a basketball.  So… I added cocoa to the frosting to make it a little darker!   The cupcakes were a new recipe… I just wanted to try it out, and now that it has been tried, I’m returning to my mom’s chocolate cake recipe.   But they’re still good.  Just not the best ever.  Although, I did up the ante a bit by piping a thick chocolate pudding into the center of them.  Mmm.  I also used that pudding to pipe on the lines of the basketball.   

But, the real achievement is the royal icing transfers!   VEGAN royal icing transfers!   Sounds impossible right?  Well first, for those of you who don’t know what a royal icing transfer is, let me explain.  Royal icing is made up of basically egg whites and sugar.  It hardens very quickly and it hardens to a shiny gloss, so it’s used for decorations very often… like on sugar cookies or wedding cakes.   It can also be used to make little toppers that actually stand up on top of a cake!   And that’s what I wanted.  I wanted little D’s standing up on my cupcakes.   

Edible D!

AND, I did it.   The thing about vegan royal icing is that there are no egg whites!  

Vegan Royal Icing:

3 tbsp water
2 tbsp egg replacer powder
1.5 -2 cups powdered sugar
1/8 tsp cream of tartar

After doing a lot of research I went with this recipe that I found here.  No idea why hers says 3 1/2 cups… maybe she meant three half cups?   Anyway, most of the recipes out there called for things like corn syrup, which would have kept my icing from hardening up the way I needed it to.  So, I went with the most basic royal icing recipe and substituted Ener-G Egg Replace for the meringue powder.  Beat the egg replacer and water until thick and frothy, mix in cream of tartar, and then add the sugar a half a cup at a time until it gets to the desired consistency. Then I drew a little D on a piece of paper and laid wax paper over that, and piped the D’s out. 

Royal blue! Get it? Because it's royal frosting....

I had some leftover frosting so I made a tray of random hearts and squiggles.  And good thing, too, because that extra tray allowed me to experiment and ultimately led to a successful cupcake experience.   You see, the next day, while the tops of the D’s and hearts and whatnot were hardened, the bottoms were still soft.   I got the idea to stick them in the oven at 200 degrees F for 5-10 minutes to dry them out.  But when I took the hearts and squiggles out of the oven, they just seemed like they’d melt if I poked them.  So, then I threw them in the freezer to cool them down… thinking that if I couldn’t use them like royal icing transfers, I could at least use them kind of like frozen buttercream transfers.  But when I took them out of the freezer, they were awesome.   I flipped over the wax paper and peeled it off their backs, and it was just… perfect.   Stiff and substantive.  Even after they came back to room temperature, they were perfect.   I thought maybe it was the freezer that did it, so I skipped the oven step with the D’s and just threw them straight into the freezer.. but no dice.   A few of the D’s just crumbled when I tried to take the wax paper off.  I even cut the paper so that each D was on it’s own little wax paper island… I thought that this would allow me more control as I peeled off the backs and would minimize bending or straining the others while I worked on one…  but nope.  Not really.  Crumbled.   So  I threw them in the oven for a few minutes and then into the freezer and…. voila!  

Happiness is a royal D.

I am so extremely happy with this.   I only attached sticks to 2 of them… since I wasn’t sure if they would be strong enough to stand up, I figured if it didn’t work well I could at least lie the rest down on top of the cupcakes.  Oh but they did work! They stood! They’re still standing!  My little royal icing D’s… standing proudly on their toothpicks.  The toothpicks were “glued” to D’s using more royal icing.  Although, now, I’ve discovered that what is typically the “back” of the royal icing is prettier and shinier… maybe it’s because it’s vegan or it has to do with the baking and freezing… I don’t know.  But I’m going to keep it in mind and always use the shiny side as my front.  

Can you see how the front D is shinier than the one standing up, or the heart in the background?   I love it.  

So now that I know how to do royal icing transfers… well…  I feel like I can do anything! It opens up a whole new world!  I’m excited for my future decorating.    Also, I really need cupcake liners.  These ones are totally ugly.   But I have them and so I feel like I need to use them up…. 

D-U-K-E! What the heck you come to see?  Duke cupcakes, little brother!