House Cake Project: Stage 5 – Designing & Decorating Girly Cupcakes With Rolled Fondant

I was so happy when the baby shower cake I made in Stage 4 came together so well without falling apart! And then I was shocked and flattered when the mother-in-law of the mom-to-be told me that she had given some of the cake to co-workers, and one of her co-workers wanted to know if I could make some cupcakes for her daughter’s birthday. I had a lot of fun working on this one, because I really love making girly baked goods. I LOVE how pink frosting and fondant look, and all of the different types of shimmery things you can decorate with… I’m sure I could do a masculine cake or something, but I LOVE doing things like this one because it reminds me of birthday parties from my childhood.

So for this project, I tried to get a lot of planning done in a short time. I had come up with a few ideas: either baking the cupcakes IN cones, or decorating the cupcakes with a mini-ice cream cone (filled with marshmallow). After going out and finding all of the supplies I needed, I discovered a little too late that the ice cream cones on top of the cupcake just wouldn’t work. (Size had a large part in this…)

So I came up with another idea to stick the ice cream cone right in the top of the cupcake. I wanted to make the cupcakes as girly as possible, and unfortunately adding the ice cream cone to the cupcake didn’t give that “feel” that I wanted. So on to another idea…

My main idea for these cupcakes that stayed constant through-out the planning process was making one batch chocolate, one batch vanilla… Then cutting off and switching the tops of each flavour to make a two-layer cupcake. I also made a strawberry butter cream icing to fill the cupcakes with. 🙂

Instead of continuing to talk about it, I’ll just post photos with explanations for the remainder of this entry. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

two tester cupcakes: switched the tops.

 

another of the switched tops 🙂

home-made strawberry butter cream to fill the cupcakes 🙂

using a cup to make the covers for the cupcakes out of rolled fondant. (this tea-cup gave the PERFECT size for cupcakes!!!)

"dirty iced" cupcakes with fondant circles. (of course, I had to spread the icing before applying the circles... but I like to swirl it on first... 🙂 )

icing is spread smoothly to cover any cracks in the tops of the cupcakes... now to apply the fondant circles!

pink covered cupcakes (vanilla bottoms with chocolate tops)

white covered cupcakes (chocolate bottoms with vanilla tops)

cutting out hearts from pink fondant

"glued" the hearts on by using some melted fondant (small amount!) with hot water. mix it together, and paint a tiny bit on the back of each fondant decoration to make it stick to another piece of fondant.

reverse colour

one idea: poke an ice cream cone through the top, and pipe some butter cream icing on top to make it look like soft serve. this idea did NOT work how I thought it would...

So I decided to keep it simple and girly by dropping the ice cream cone.

with some pink decorator gel, I piped on the letter "A" to each cupcake (the birthday girl's first initial), and then dipped the top of the cupcake in pink sugar so that it would stick to the piped gel. I also dusted each cupcake top with a silver shimmer powder.

I even found a way to keep the ice cream cones involved! 🙂

SUPPLIES USED:

• rolled fondant
• gel food colouring (pink) to make pink fondant
• icing sugar to dust work surface of rolled fondant
• rolled fondant rolling-pin
• LOTS of paper towels for constant cleaning 😉
• vanilla butter cream icing for “dirty icing” of tops of cupcakes for application of rolled fondant
• home-made strawberry butter cream for centers of cupcakes, and to hold the switched tops to the base
• silver candy balls for decoration around the heart
• decorator white and pink candy gel to “glue” silver balls onto fondant
• decorator pink candy gel to pipe letter “A” on cupcakes
• water and brush to “glue” fondant hearts onto cupcakes
• pink sugar for decoration on piped letter “A” on cupcakes
• marshmallow filled mini ice cream cones for presentation on delivery
• chocolate and vanilla cake mix
• muffin tins/paper cups/ice cream pattern paper cups for display