Portrait cupcakes

It's a small step from doing 'people' cupcakes to doing actual portraits of people you know. This is an off the wall idea for thank yous, birthdays or other occasions where you really want someone to feel special.

Warning, they may just end up thinking "What the?!.... my face isn't that round... and is my nose really that pudgy??!"

So pick your audience, but hopefully they will get a laugh out of it.

Quick tip is that it really helps if they have some distinctive feature, like long dark hair or massive eyebrows or glasses or a beard... there are limitations to portraiture accuracy on a cupcake so you need to have some simple feature that stands out and says to them that this isn't just a random 'face'.

I did these because I wanted to say thank you to some very talented and generous people who opened the amazing MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) in Hobart. It was a question of what do you give someone who has everything, I thought a set of cupcakes with a picture of each of the prime movers and the lettering that makes up the MONA branding would maybe raise a smile. Who can say no to a cupcake!

This is the final presentation. I stuck the bases down with museum gel (this was not a deliberate reference to their museum, just an old curators trick of using it whenever you want something to stick fast but be removable).

Oddly enough the faces weren't the most difficult bit. The lettering was. This was because I wanted to copy exactly the particular font and colours of the MONA brand.

I ended up tracing them from a MONA catalogue onto baking paper, then placing the baking paper on top of rolled fondant and scoring through it very gently with a knife. Then I removed the paper and cut the scored lines.

One tip is leave the letters half cut out - as in the picture - to harden up a bit before you try to remove the void spaces. Otherwise they will stretch and deform.

The 'O' was cut using two sizes of circle cutter.