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. So this post for Stage 5 of my House Cake Project is not only a step in my progress of working with cake decorating, but also my FIRST commissioned work! That’s right folks! For the first time in my life, I’ve been paid to bake!! It’s not really the act of being paid that had me so excited (everyone likes money, sure, but at this stage in the game I’m not a professional), but the fact that someone actually had seen/tried something of mine and was willing to pay for something made by me. It’s a nice feeling.

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.

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



Filed under: House Cake Project Tagged: butter cream, candy, chocolate, culinary, cupcakes, dessert, girly, House Cake Project, muffin, pink, rolled fondant, Sweet, vanilla