cupcake heaven

(I have made a load of pink themed fairy/ cupcakes for the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Charity cake sale at my eldest son's school.

As I have been recently thinking, I need to do far more icing (but I don't want to be eating the cakes!!) so this was the perfect opportunity to get some practice in.

I spent around 2 hours icing 25 cakes!!! I dipped some in fondant, some in royal icing and some in icing sugar mixed with water. All three were dyed shades of pink! Once they were dry I made up some deep pink and white royal icing to a stiffish consistency so it would pipe nicely (Peggy Porshen explains this well in her books). I used a PME size 2 piping tube.

Also I used Peggy's Pretty Party cakes book as an inspiration for some of the designs, she has some more "masculine" designs as well as very girly girl designs! As the theme was pink I kept to that.

The way I did the gold cupcakes was to pipe white royal icing on, then once that was dry, I hand painted over with gold lustre powder, that I had mixed to a solution with the edable painting solution.

I also attempted a "frangipanni" flower that I saw on here and got the tutorial from here! I used regalice/ ready to roll icing as these are likely to be eaten, rather than the flowerpaste I usually make flowers from. I used my Azalea flower cutter which looked a similar shape to the one in the tutorial. I think if I had done it in flowerpaste it would have come out even better, it certainly makes a lovely shaped flower.

I have also been finding lots of inspiration from a tv programme on UKTV food called "Ace of Cakes" about Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, I don't live in the USA but if I was near that cake shop, I would love a cake from them! (and secretly wish I was good enough to work with them - I am a LONG LONG way off from that point!)

UPDATE: Apologies for upcoming boasting! My cakes were priced at £1 each (all other cakes at 50p! And my cakes sold out first!) So I raised £25 - which isn't bad. They asked me to make loads of cakes for the Xmas Fair and wanted my phone number! So I was so so flattered and pleased, as I'm just a beginner and most of the time all I see is the imperfections and give myself a lot of self doubt. So really realy pleased (end of boasting!)