a m y m c c r a c k e n

 I made up about 4 dozen cupcakes for the RSPCA cupcake day this year. Please vote for my creations so I can win a baking pack for my efforts:

http://www.rspcacupcakeday.com.au/competitions/creative-cupcake/entry/?cupcake=88

I made three different types:

Hello Kitty cupcakes – Vanilla flavour with hint of apple & cinnamon decorated with blue icing and a fondant Hello Kitty and dusted with edible glitter

Rainbow Vanilla Cupcakes – rainbow cupcake (purple, pink, orange) topped with rainbow (yellow, green, blue) buttercream icing and sprinkled with edible glitter

Red Velvet Cupcakes – topped with buttery cream cheese icing, with a sprinkle of red edible glitter and decorated with black cats

Hello Kitty cupcakes

For the Hello Kitty cupcakes, I made the standard cupcake recipe that I use from the Edmonds cookbook and threw in some additional flavours:

ingredients

• 190g butter, softened
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tsp apple essence
• 1 C caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 ½ C plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• ½ C milk

method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C
2. Cream butter, cinnamon, essences and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition
4. Sift flour and baking powder together
5. Fold into creamed mixture
6. Stir in milk
7. Spoon mixture evenly into the prepared mini cupcake pan that has been lined with paper cases
8. Bake for 20 mins or until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched
9. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down before decorating

butter icing

ingredients

• 250g butter
• 400g icing sugar, sifted
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ tsp apple essence
• ½ tsp food colouring

Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth. Divide into thirds and colour each batch as desired

decoration

For decoration I created fondant Hello Kitty’s. I made a stencil out of cardboard, rolled the fondant out to about 5mm thick then cut out shapes using a craft knife.

For the features (nose & eyes) I cut out coloured bits from a liquorice allsort using a round piping tip (Steve helped out too), and for the whiskers I chopped up fruit sticks into small strips.

To make the features stick to the fondant I wet the cut out with water then pressed them on. Once dried (by the heater to speed up the drying process) I painted the eyes with black food colouring. Then, when the eyes dried out, I brushed white edible glitter over the kitty. To assemble, I piped the blue icing onto each cupcake then sprinkled with silver edible glitter, then popped on the kitty decoration.

I recommend making fondant decorations at least the day before you plan to use them so they can harden up in time.

rainbow cupcakes

For these I made the same recipe as my rainbow cupcakes post. This time round, instead of swirling the mixture before I baking, I evened it out so the cupcake colours stacked on top of each other rather than marbling.

red velvet cupcakes

For these I made Nigella’s red velvet cupcake recipe (see this post). To decorate I piped the icing on top of each cupcake, sprinkled on red glitter the placed on some black cat sprinkles.