I needed to make a small batch of cupcakes for a man at church, so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to both try out The Pioneer Woman's Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever and to show you a small tutorial on how I make buttercream icing and how to pipe it onto cupcakes. I felt the need to try this recipe because I have heard so many wonderful things about it, but I wanted to try it in cupcake form, so I halved the recipe. Here's the recipe and the following pictures that I took during the process. My pictures are not as great as PW's because 1. I am a terrible photographer, and 2. I don't have a mack daddy amazing camera like PW does, so if you want to see cool pictures, check out her site. If you want to see cooking in reality without the aid of photoshop and wonderful snazzy photography equipment, continue here.
Pioneer Woman Chocolate Sheet Cake (HALVED!!)
Combine in a mixing bowl:
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

In a saucepan, melt:
1 sticks butter
Add 2 heaping tablespoons cocoa. Stir together.
Add 1/2 cup boiling water, allow mixture to boil for 30 seconds, then turn off heat. Pour over flour mixture, and stir lightly to cool.

In measuring cup, pour 1/4 cup buttermilk.
Add:
1 beaten egg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Stir buttermilk mixture into butter/chocolate mixture. Pour into sheet cake pan (or cupcake tin with cupcake wrappers) and bake at 350-degrees for 15-20 minutes.

There is an "icing" that goes with this recipe, but since I am later going to be adding a simple vanilla buttercream icing, I opted not to make PW's recipe for icing this time.

Making vanilla buttercream icing
1. Start by putting the amount f butter you are going to be using in your mixer. For this recipe, I only needed a very small amount of buttercream icing, so I only used 1/4 stick. I use both salted and unsalted butter, it really just depends on what is on sale that day!
Generally when I am making a large layer cake, I will make batches of buttecream at a time so I don't bog down my mixer, and generally this is the recipe I will use:
Vanilla Buttercream Icing
1 stick butter
8 cups powdered sugar (this is one entire 32 ounce bag)
1 tbsp. vanilla
Heavy cream (I usually just eyeball the amount while the icing is mixed, it probably ends up to be around 1/2 cup)

2. So it's best to work with room temperature butter, but sometimes I get impatient and just have to nuke cold butter in the microwave. Notice in my picture that the butter is softened, not completely all melted. Mix your softened butter in the mixer until it is all one consistency.
3. Add the desire about of powdered sugar and vanilla to the mixer. Here since I only used 1/4 stick of butter, I only needed 2 cups powdered sugar and a very small amount of vanilla. Start the mixer and let that incorporate a little. The powdered sugar should start to incorporate into the butter in lumps, and then it's time to add the cream!
4. You can honestly just use water or milk in this step, but I find that (obviously) heavy cream tastes much better in the final product. With the mixer running, pour a very thin line of whipping cream down the side of the mixer into the sugar/butter mixture. You have added enough cream when all of the ingredients are mixed together thoroughly and looks like how you would imagine icing to look!
There can be different consistencies of icing based on how much liquid (cream, water, etc.) you add to the icing while mixing. Thicker icings are best to be used to make icing roses and flowers and intricate decorations on sides of cakes. Thinner icings are best to be used to fill, "crumbcoat", and ice cakes since it doesn't pull on the delicate structure of the cake and get crumbs in your icing. I will probably do a tutorial on how to fill and ice a cake soon to show you what I mean about this!
5. When your icing ingredients are all mixed together, your'e done! Or, you can do as I've done and add some food coloring to make the icing a pretty color. In this case, I have chosen pink. Mix the icing in the mixer a little bit longer to fully incorporate the color. After it mixes for a little while, I still usually have to use a spoon to get the icing incorporated to the icing on the side of the mixing bowl that stubbornly didn't want to be pink.
6. Now it's time to add the icing to the bag! I have chosen a large "closed star" decorating tip. All of the cake supplies I use are usually either bought from Michael's or Hobby Lobby, but if you aren't near either of these types of arts & crafts stores, you can also buy cake decorating supplies from Wilton online.
Add the decorating tip to the plastic decorating bag (you could theoretically use a Zip-lock bag as a decorating bag, but for my large-scale cake decorating purposes, they just don't work that well for me. Anyway, throw the tip in the bag, and then cut a small portion of the end of the bag out so that the tip fits securely in place at the bottom of the bag.
7. Roll down the top portion of the bag about halfway so that it's easier to get the icing down into the bottom of the bag, and so that it doesn't get icing toward the top of the bag that you will later have to twist to close. Don't add all of your icing to the bag at once, fill it with probably about 3/4 cup of the icing at a time or else it will turn into a pretty big mess by squirting out the open end of the bag. You can always go back later and add more icing to the bag when you run low.
8. Pull the top of the bag back up and knead the icing in the bag a little to remove any air pockets.
9. Twist the end of the bag so that the icing is enclosed securely and then get your cooled cupcakes out and get ready to decorate them!
10. Starting at the outside edge of the cupcake, squeeze with medium pressure on the bag to start the flow of the icing out of the bag. In one continuous motion, begin working the icing around the cupcake in a circular motion working toward the middle. Once you have made it to the middle of the cupcake, squeeze a little on the bag and because the tip has a star pattern, a cute little star will finish off the decoration on the cupcake.
11. You're done! Now stand back and admire your hard work! And also try not to notice that 2 of my cupcakes are missing. After all your hard work is done, you deserve to enjoy one (or 2) of your creation!