I am doing a simple swirl with 1M tip.
can anyone give me an approximate idea of how many cupcakes I can expect to frost with about 1 cup of icing??

I make a buttercream similiar to the Wilton recipe.

Promise I won't hold you to it! Just looking for an estimation.

Thanks!

I use a batch to a batch and a half to do 24. Depends on how generous I need the icing to be.

Thanks!

One CUP of icing? With the 1M tip? 2 cupcakes!

I just iced 140 cupcakes this way last night and I used alot of icing! I can't tell you exactly how much, but I can tell you what I used to make it. First off let me just say I am a self proclaimed Sandra Lee of caking. I love the decorating part, but I'm not so fond of the baking and making icing part so I tend to take whatever shortcuts I can.

I used a bucket of the Wilton decorator icing you get at Wal-Mart, 2 boxes of the Wilton buttercream icing mix (made according to directions but using all butter since there's plenty of shortening in the decorator icing), and a batch of buttercream icing I found on allrecipes.com that called for 4 cups of powdered sugar, 1 cup butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 2 tablespoons milk. This filled my 6qt mixer almost to the top!

All I have left after a little bit of sampling, piping a few centers on some blossoms for half of the cupcakes, and the 140 cupcakes themselves is enough icing to do maybe 4 more cupcakes! So be prepared to make a lot of icing!! Good luck!

Minimum 1/4 cup icing per cupcake...MINIMUM!

If I want a single go around with the swirl, I use 2 tbs. If I want to pile it up (ice cream cone look), it is 3-4 tbs.

I just iced 60 cupcakes with Earlene's cream cheese buttercream. I took a second and weighed my icing (zeroed out the scale with naked cupcake, then piped). The 1M swirl was 27g. which is 1.6875 tablespoons.

I am putting fondant circles with monograms on top, so I did not want a particularly tall swirl, but this is more than enough icing for the cupcake. I'm trying to attach the photo so you can see how much icing that is on the cuppie.

If you have some icing on hand, you can always just weigh your swirl as I did and you'll know exactly how much you'll need. I had guesstimated at 2 tbs each and have just over 2 1/2 cups of extra pink icing (I hate having leftover colors I won't need - especially pink because I have 4 boys).

Well, I'm not sure why I can't get it to attach, but I just started on the very outside edge of the cupcake and worked my way in. I did let it mound up a little bit in the center, but didn't add a 2nd round. HTH.