Makin' Babies!
Sweet Shoppe graphic from my good friend Lauren's Couture Baby Shower Collection on Storkie.com.She also created my logo!
Yes yes yes, I know exactly what the title of this post implies and, while it is indeed true that my husband and I spent all night last night making babies, nothing of the sordid sort happened. This is not that kind of blog! Allow me to explain.
I've gotten a request for baby shower cupcakes for Sunday. I've never made cupcakes for this lady before so I'd like to make a good impression. Not that I wouldn't try my best for someone who already knew me, but this time I feel like the pressure's slightly higher than if these were for a good friend or family member.
This lady is having a little baby girl (yay!! pink!!) and of course the first thing my mind raced to was, "SWEET! Now I get to make those cute little ballerina cupcakes I found the other day! I thought about it a bit, though, and decided to nix that as I feel that those cupcakes are more for a little girl than a baby. I still needed pink so I thought back to the pink Mary Kay cupcakes I made for my friend's Mary Kay debut party. Coincidentally, I also made baby shower cupcakes that weekend (the jungle cupcakes). However, while they were pink and pretty, I thought they might seem too grown-up what with the little pearl dragees and all.
I kept my mind open as I came up with more possibilities. Sure I could just go buy some little mini decorations (baby rattles, bottles, booties, etc.) and stick 'em on but I wanted these to be a bit more special. I made an exception for Dede's yacht party cupcakes because, come on, those picks were freaking awesome. If I were an Elvgren girl I would totally have eaten those cupcakes in a heartbeat.
That's when I happened upon Alicia's post about her recent foray into fondant. "I could do that," I thought. I used to play with clay all the time as a kid and I loved sculpting little creatures. Surely I could make some little babies for the tops of cupcakes, right? It's not like I was covering a whole cake or anything. How hard could it be?
*Snicker*
I bought some pre-made Wilton's fondant at Michael's and set to work tinting it with my gel food coloring. That's where I ran into my first problem. There are no little recipes on the side of the food coloring boxes to tell you how to make "peach skin color" or any color whatsoever. I decided to wing it and threw some orange and yellow together and hoped for the best.
"The best" didn't happen.
The worst happened.
Unless this lady is planning on celebrating the birth of her horribly jaundiced baby girl, the color I came up with was ALL WRONG. I finally caved and looked online like I should have in the beginning. What a time to act like a guy and refuse to ask for directions! I found that I should have actually been adding more red, not yellow, so I added some red and then a bit extra for safe measure and came up with a passable skin color. Let me tell you right now I still have some of the coloring on my hands. I know I could/should wear gloves when coloring fondant but somehow I felt like I wouldn't be able to work with the fondant as well as I could with my bare (clean) hands. Besides, wearing gloves hearkens back to the days in biology class with ether-filled frogs and other such non-appetizing things. Well, that and helping my mom color her hair.
Anywho, back to the topic at hand: fondant babies. I googled "fondant babies" and found some at Who Doesn't Like Cake? that were good go-by's. I felt that the simpler I could go, the better. I needed 24 and I decided to do half with white blankets and half with pink to mix it up. I don't know that I particularly like the idea of fondant covering my entire cupcake. I can definitely appreciate the beauty of fondant and while I don't necessarily subscribe to the "Ew fondant tastes disgusting" party, I definitely do subscribe to the, "I'll take a corner piece of sheet cake because it has two sides of frosting and yes, I'll take the one under the giant bunch of superfluous neon-colored flowers thankyouverymuch" party. Mmmm... Costco cake...
There I go again! Ugh. Keeping on track: bottom line is, I love me some frosting and to make my cupcakes covered in fondant would completely detract from my absolute most favorite part of cupcake anatomy. Therefore, these had to be single little babies. It took me a while to get the blanket-wrapping part down pat. Rolling the little blankets out took some time, too, because the more I worked the fondant the stickier it got and the more it clung to the little rolling pin. I tried using cornstarch like you would flour for rolling out cookie dough but all it ended up doing was getting everywhere.
Finally, there came the time to give the little babies faces. I've seen a lot of faces drawn on fondant babies with what appears to be a food marker (?) but I don't know where to get that sort of thing. A specialty kitchen shop? Time for more googling. I ended up using a toothpick, though, and that somewhat worked for the two facial expressions that I decided on. Some of the mouths are a little crooked but that's the homemade charm, right? RIGHT??
After much coloring, rolling, smooshing, wrapping, and poking with toothpicks, here's the end result:
Rub a dub dub, three babies in a tub...
Holy smokes, Batman! These babies go on forever!!
I've gotten a request for baby shower cupcakes for Sunday. I've never made cupcakes for this lady before so I'd like to make a good impression. Not that I wouldn't try my best for someone who already knew me, but this time I feel like the pressure's slightly higher than if these were for a good friend or family member.
This lady is having a little baby girl (yay!! pink!!) and of course the first thing my mind raced to was, "SWEET! Now I get to make those cute little ballerina cupcakes I found the other day! I thought about it a bit, though, and decided to nix that as I feel that those cupcakes are more for a little girl than a baby. I still needed pink so I thought back to the pink Mary Kay cupcakes I made for my friend's Mary Kay debut party. Coincidentally, I also made baby shower cupcakes that weekend (the jungle cupcakes). However, while they were pink and pretty, I thought they might seem too grown-up what with the little pearl dragees and all.
I kept my mind open as I came up with more possibilities. Sure I could just go buy some little mini decorations (baby rattles, bottles, booties, etc.) and stick 'em on but I wanted these to be a bit more special. I made an exception for Dede's yacht party cupcakes because, come on, those picks were freaking awesome. If I were an Elvgren girl I would totally have eaten those cupcakes in a heartbeat.
That's when I happened upon Alicia's post about her recent foray into fondant. "I could do that," I thought. I used to play with clay all the time as a kid and I loved sculpting little creatures. Surely I could make some little babies for the tops of cupcakes, right? It's not like I was covering a whole cake or anything. How hard could it be?
*Snicker*
I bought some pre-made Wilton's fondant at Michael's and set to work tinting it with my gel food coloring. That's where I ran into my first problem. There are no little recipes on the side of the food coloring boxes to tell you how to make "peach skin color" or any color whatsoever. I decided to wing it and threw some orange and yellow together and hoped for the best.
"The best" didn't happen.
The worst happened.
Unless this lady is planning on celebrating the birth of her horribly jaundiced baby girl, the color I came up with was ALL WRONG. I finally caved and looked online like I should have in the beginning. What a time to act like a guy and refuse to ask for directions! I found that I should have actually been adding more red, not yellow, so I added some red and then a bit extra for safe measure and came up with a passable skin color. Let me tell you right now I still have some of the coloring on my hands. I know I could/should wear gloves when coloring fondant but somehow I felt like I wouldn't be able to work with the fondant as well as I could with my bare (clean) hands. Besides, wearing gloves hearkens back to the days in biology class with ether-filled frogs and other such non-appetizing things. Well, that and helping my mom color her hair.
Anywho, back to the topic at hand: fondant babies. I googled "fondant babies" and found some at Who Doesn't Like Cake? that were good go-by's. I felt that the simpler I could go, the better. I needed 24 and I decided to do half with white blankets and half with pink to mix it up. I don't know that I particularly like the idea of fondant covering my entire cupcake. I can definitely appreciate the beauty of fondant and while I don't necessarily subscribe to the "Ew fondant tastes disgusting" party, I definitely do subscribe to the, "I'll take a corner piece of sheet cake because it has two sides of frosting and yes, I'll take the one under the giant bunch of superfluous neon-colored flowers thankyouverymuch" party. Mmmm... Costco cake...
There I go again! Ugh. Keeping on track: bottom line is, I love me some frosting and to make my cupcakes covered in fondant would completely detract from my absolute most favorite part of cupcake anatomy. Therefore, these had to be single little babies. It took me a while to get the blanket-wrapping part down pat. Rolling the little blankets out took some time, too, because the more I worked the fondant the stickier it got and the more it clung to the little rolling pin. I tried using cornstarch like you would flour for rolling out cookie dough but all it ended up doing was getting everywhere.
Finally, there came the time to give the little babies faces. I've seen a lot of faces drawn on fondant babies with what appears to be a food marker (?) but I don't know where to get that sort of thing. A specialty kitchen shop? Time for more googling. I ended up using a toothpick, though, and that somewhat worked for the two facial expressions that I decided on. Some of the mouths are a little crooked but that's the homemade charm, right? RIGHT??
After much coloring, rolling, smooshing, wrapping, and poking with toothpicks, here's the end result:
Rub a dub dub, three babies in a tub...
Holy smokes, Batman! These babies go on forever!!
Those came out super cute...I won't lie Fondant kind of scares me! I always think the concept seems easy, until I pull out the fondant and realize the Bride looks like an ape...LOL!!
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