Dr Cupcake and Miss Macaron: Lots 'n' lots of piggywig cupcakes!

A whole STY of piggywigs for morning tea at work this week!

"And there in the wood a Piggy-wig stood, with a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, with a ring at the end of his nose."

Although I love this quote from The Owl and the Pussycat it makes me wonder if I should have put little rings in the noses of my piggywig cupcakes.

Farming question: do piggywigs have rings in their noses these days??

These piggywigs are waiting expectantly for Tuesday morning tea at work. I chose this design because it's simple and quick, an advantage because on this occasion I needed to make a fair few of them and had limited time.

Piggywig uses one large round cutter to cut out the face. His snout is hand shaped by rolling a ball of fondant, then flattening it a bit top-to-bottom and upward-downward. The snout is stuck on to the face with a few drops of water, and you can use the end of a little paintbrush to make the dents for the nostrils.

The eyes are tiny balls of black fondant placed in tiny holes made by the smallest size of ball tool and moistened with a drop of water to stick them down.

The ears are stamped out with a little triangle cutter, but if you don't have one you could cut triangles with a knife.

This is the production line of piggywigs getting their snouts and ears and eyes put on.

I also brushed some rose petal dust (diluted with cornflour) onto the cheeks, to give them that rosy blush. I put a little on the tips of the ears too but it's a very subtle effect that is hard to see in the pics.

A warning, I cut the ear triangles and left them to dry for a short while because they were so soft that it was difficult to stand them up. But when they had dried a bit, they were much more likely to crack and have an uneven surface. I'm not really happy with the ears, would welcome advice?

A note on colouring the fondant, start off with a really tiny amount of colour. The amount of colour shown in the pic below left was actually too much for this quantity of fondant - I had to add that much fondant again to get the colour down from a very hot pink to a piggy pink. That's why the fondant seems to have 'expanded' in the pic below right.