The Icing on the Cake

This is one full recipe of the aforementioned buttercream. I failed to measure it, but I'd guesstimate it's about 8 cups. I tinted this with a little bit of Wilton orange paste coloring I bought to dye silks (another post for another day). Again, I bought the coloring with a 40% off coupon, so I think I paid about $6 for 8 small pots of color. To add color, dip a toothpick in the color and swirl it through the frosting, then mix until combined. Keep adding color until it reaches slightly lighter than the final color you want. Color will intensify upon standing.

For application to the cakes, I thought I'd try piping it on first. I loaded a Ziploc bag with icing and added a Wilton 1M star tip, as I'd seen a giant cupcake on Flickr iced with that tip and thought it looked good. My first attempt was ..... well, a failure.
This isn't the best photo, but the cake showed through, the bottom ring of frosting kept falling off, and overall it was just not good, so I smoothed down the icing with an offset spatula a bit, and dotted it with orange sugar.
For cake #2, I chose to monkey around with the star tip a bit, creating swirls instead of piping straight across. While not perfect, this was more successful, so I drizzled it with orange pumpkin sprinkles and brown jimmies.