Aileen has always been the one to take on the yearly gingerbread house construction, my wedding cake, or any other project that requires the patience of Job and will just get eaten in the end.(Actually the gingerbread houses usuallyget blown up sometime in January by Jarrett and Matt’s collection of small explosives, but anyways…)
So it was a little more up her alley when we decided to create mini chocolate cupcakes, topped with a cream cheese butter-cream frosting, decorated with hand-painted, hand-cut fondant flowers and sprinkled with shimmery rock sugar. But it sounded fun to me and I thought it would make a pretty dessert for my friend Becky’s baby shower.
We found everything we needed at, where else? A store completely devoted to cake decorating (gotta love a big city for that) Home Cake Decorating Supply Co. located in Maple Leaf. The store is quite a little mess of a place, but the gruff, nice lady in there has everything you could ever need and there’s something charming about not being able to find a thing you are looking for while she knows the exact location of every Bambi cake topper or clover leaf shaped baking pan in the store.
When I asked about fondant and said I needed just a little bit, she said, “Oh you know, this stuff keeps forever.”
“Oh, that’s good to know,” I said.
“Oh yeah, just throw it in the back of your baking cabinet and you can pull it out any time you’re bored and just turn on the TV and make things out of fondant.”
Sometimes, people you’ve known for all of 2 minutes say something that gives you a ridiculously vivid peak into their life. But anyways, back to the mini cupcakes…
So with our supplies assembled we began.
sugar, dyes, paint brushes, fondant, and flower shape cutters galore.
We found this super yum recipe for the frosting, and used the Hershey chocolate cake recipe.
I got kind of grumpy when the paper started getting a little soggy and peeled away from the little cakes. But Aileen kept with it.
We flipped for these retro looking green cupcake papers.
In the end the pink and purple dyes weren’t the subtle, pretty shades we’d hoped and we went for an all white color scheme. The end product was really pertty cute looking. And most importantly they tasted tasty.
My sweet friend Becky Hostetter said I should stop by and I’m SO glad she did! What a lovely blog! Almost licked the cupcakes right off the screen too.
Those vivid peaks into people’s lives make great character sketches for a well told story!
I stopped by the next day and ate not one, but TWO of those cupcakes! They were SO tasty (which is always surprising when they look that perfect)
It is always nice to get a bit of additional instruction for renovating and designing (or thinking about it).