Making Easter Cupcakes with Sally Alps

My Easter present to myself was a cupcake decorating class with Sally Alps of Alps & Amici in Launceston... yum yum yum.

Sally does an awesome job of keeping Tasmania supplied with the most intricate, imaginative and brilliant cupcakes. She is also a great teacher and runs regular courses on how to decorate fondant cakes and cupcakes. Pictured on the left are the three patterns we learnt to make in the Easter cupcake course.

Sally demonstrated each technique first....

... Then we sat down at our places and had a look through everything that was laid out for us: full instructions, ready-coloured fondant, three cupcakes which were already ganached, and equipment including a rolling pin, knife and spatula.

First up we made an Easter basket. The cupcake is covered in a pastel shade - I chose blue, but green and pink were also popular choices.

Then we cut a small circle of brown fondant for the base of the Easter basket, and rolled a very very long roll of brown fondant to make the basket weave. It was nearly as hard as actually weaving a real bloody basket.
'Yeah right' you're thinking, 'how difficult can it be to make a sausage roll shape?' ... okay, YOU try making one that's 30cm long and the same smooth diameter at every point. :-(

After passing the 'sausage challenge', we used the roll to make the sides and handle of the basket.

When the handle was stuck in place it started to look okay!

Next, using a dab of royal icing, we stuck a few little eggs in the basket. These were pre-made for us from fondant but you could also use small candy eggs.

Using a little roll of bright green fondant snipped with scissors, we made tufts of grass to nestle against the basket.

To finish off, Sally provided some pre-made flowers. These needed to be pre-made because they take a while to dry - however, when Sally demonstrated the technique she used to make them, they were so logical and so quick that I am keen to make a stack myself and store them.

This is my finished Easter basket yay!

Everyone had different results - all looked great. It's interesting to see the extent to which one pattern can be interpreted in so many different ways and come out looking quite different.

This is another student's basket.

Next we started on the Easter Bunny cupcake. His ears needed to be made first because they required drying time. We rolled and hand cut two oblongs of white fondant and two smaller pink fondant oblongs. These were ten stuck together and pierced with florist's wire to about two thirds of the way up, and one ear was bent over in a flopsy bunny kind of way.

There were plenty of boob jokes flying around at the next stage. We rolled two small balls of fondant and stuck them directly on the top of the cupcake, then rolled and cut out a large circle and stuck it on the top. Although it definitely looks booby at this stage, this is actually the bunny's chubby cheeks. You'll see.

We smoothed the fondant down very carefully - this was the first time I had covered unusual shapes and I was really pleased with how elastic the fondant covering was, so it was quite easy to get a really smooth finish.
Then we cut two small white circles and two smaller black circles for the eyes, taking a little half moon off each so that they could sit right into the 'chubby cheeks'.
We hand-cut the teeth - sort of a V shape so they could sit right up into the cheeks as well.

We dusted the cheeks with a little rose petal dust (see my previous posts for this magical stuff that puts a beautiful blush in fondant cheeks), and used some cake flower stamens as whiskers.

Then all that was left was to stick the ears on, using the end of the florist's wire, and hoppy hoppy, there's the bunny!!

*Trap for young players: I always feel a bit nervous using non-edible equipment in cakes. These have wire in the ears and whiskers - take care if gifting to children!

It would be fair to say that everybody was pretty happy with their bunnies.

The third pattern we did was hatching chickens in eggs, but I am going to write about that separately.

By the time it got to the end of the class, there were intricately-decorated cupcakes just about everywhere.

It was fantastic to be part of a group who were all totally focused on cupcaking. I will say that every member of this group was female. What, boys don't like cupcakes or something??

At the end of the class we proudly gazed at our decorated cupcakes and took them home to be guzzled by (hopefully grateful) spouses, children, flatmates etc.


Thanks Sally for a fantastic Easter experience!

Hatching chicken cupcakes for Easter

Little chicks bursting out of white 'egg' cupcakes... Yes, Easter is here and Dr Cupcake is celebrating!

These little chicks have a cheeky look to them and they're full of character, but surprisingly simple to make, Sitting on top of a chocolate mud cupcake, they make for a festive Easter.

Thanks to Sally Alps of Alps & Amici for this lovely design.

To start, ganache your cupcake so that you have a flat smooth surface (see previous posts). Then roll and cut a small white fondant circle and stick it in the middle of your cupcake, using a drop of water to fix it in place. It doesn't matter if the edges aren't perfect, because these will be covered. Coat the top of the circle with cornflour - you can see a thick sprinkle of cornflour in this pic.

Then cut a larger circle out of white fondant and lay it on top of the cupcake, pressing down gently around the double-thickness circle in the middle, and burnishing the edges carefully with a piece of hard plastic (see previous posts). You will end up with a white fondant-topped cupcake which looks smooth but has a raised circular shape in the centre due to the double thickness of the fondant.

Now take a small sharp knife and make a straight cut through the double thickness circle in the middle.

Then make another cut at right angles to it, so that you have cut a cross.

Using the edge of the knife blade, gently prise the corners of the top layer of fondant up and fold them back a little so that they stick up into the air. This is your 'cracked eggshell'.

If the white base underneath is cut or marked don't panic because the chicken will be sitting on that bit so you won't see it.

Next roll a ball of yellow fondant and cut one side of it off with a sharp knife so that you have a flat surface at the base. Stick this into the 'egg' with a drop of water. This is the chicken's body.















Roll a smaller ball of yellow fondant for the chicken's head and stick it to the body with a drop of water. Be careful not to use too much water or you'll end up with a very sticky chicken.

Get a tiny piece of orange fondant and roll a little cone shape between your thumb and forefinger. Cut the cone off at its base with a small knife - it should be about 2mm long.

Then take a slightly larger piece of orange fondant and make a comb for the chicken's head. This starts off as a flattish sort of oblong shape. Stand the oblong up horizontally, so that one of its sides flattens out to form a base. Then use a small pair of scissors (sterilised nail scissors or barber's scissors are good) to snip into the other side of the oblong, like in this pic. When finished, carefully position the comb on the chicken's head and fix with a very tiny drop of water.

Paint two tiny black dots for eyes, using black food colouring or an edible food pen in Jet Black (available from cake decorating stores).
In this pic, I have done the eyes of the front chicken but he has not yet got his comb on. The chickens at the back have obviously been distracted by something happening off camera to the left.

Hey presto Easter chickens hatching out of pure white eggs!

A small tip, it helps if your cupcakes are quite domed on top - mostly I aim for flat topped cupcakes, but these seem more 'eggy' if they are rounded.

You could have all sorts of creatures hatching from these eggs (if it wasn't Easter of course). I've seen some awesome Paris Cutler designs of baby dinosaurs hatching.

 As we know, it's not all about fondant. Sometimes there's room for old fashioned glace icing (especially when you're doing gluten free orange and almond cakes that sink in the middle and don't give you a flat surface).

These little cakes are iced with a lemon glace icing (lemon juice and icing sugar stirred to a stiff paste) with a little yellow colouring added.

The icing was piped on using a star nozzle to get a slightly 'nestlike' shape, and the eggs pressed into the icing while it was still soft.

I used some pretty little milk chocolate eggs that were a quick purchase from the supermarket. I loved the speckles and the soft eggshell like colours.

Happy Easter, may the Easter Bunny be generous and not lead you on too exhausting an Easter Egg Hunt. :-)