Christmas cupcakes 2: Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

If you've made Santa cupcakes (see here) then you really need to make some reindeer to help the poor ole guy out. This is Rudolph.

Rudolph looks a bit worried. I think that's entirely reasonable, it's his busiest time of year after all.

I made a strategic error when planning these cupcakes. I thought that red as a background colour would look suitably bright and Christmas-y. But with a red background, Rudolph's beautiful red nose doesn't really glow like it should. I would have been better to do a dark green background.

Oh well - there's always next year.

For Rudolph's face, you need to roll out some dark brown fondant. You can get this pre-coloured and chocolate flavoured and that's what I used here.

Cut out some circles approximately one third to half the size of the top of your cupcake, then use a slightly larger circle cutter to take two elliptical 'bites' out of the sides of the circle, as shown in this picture. You're aiming for an hourglass shape that is wider at the top than the bottom.

Once you've made the cuts, round the corners by hand until you have a smooth shape. This will be Rudolph's head.

Stick the head onto the top of the cupcake, leaving a little more room above it than below it (remember you need to fit the antlers above the head). Fix it with a few drops of water.

Here are all the cupcakes with heads on.

Roll two little balls of white fondant and stick them on - these are Rudolph's eyes. Make little holes in the centres so that you can stick the pupils on.

A little tip to help you make a pair of eyes that are exactly the same size: Roll a ball of fondant larger than you need, then cut it in half exactly with a sharp knife and re-roll two separate fondant balls. This way they will be exactly the same size.

Roll two very small balls of black fondant and stick them into the indentations in the 'eyeballs' with a tiny drop of water. Beware if you use too much water next to black fondant, the colour will run.

Roll a ball of red fondant for the nose and stick it in place.

I suddenly realised after I'd made these that there should really be only one Rudolph with a red nose, the other reindeer should all have black noses. So if you wanted to be more historically accurate (if you can say that about reindeer pulling a fat man's sleigh through the air all around the world in one night) you could do seven black-nosed reindeer and one beautiful, shiny red-nosed one.

For the antlers, I used a leaf cutter, cutting out a leaf shape and then slicing it in half vertically and 'feathering' the straight edge with a sharp knife. In this pic you can see the cutter on the right, then the leaf shape and on the left you can see the finished antlers.

Fix the antlers in place and decorate the edges with some cachous if you feel like it. They provide a bit of colour variation and they are nice and shiny. I wanted to use green ones but I only had a kind of aqua colour. I like to think they look green though.

All the little Rudolphs looked rather frightened. I love how they're all looking worriedly in different directions, like they're not sure exactly what they should be scared of, but they're keeping a close eye on everything.

Merry Christmas from Dr Cupcake!!

Christmas Cupcakes 1: Santa Cupcake

Christmas is rolling around again... how better to celebrate than making some cupcakes of Santa!

These cupcakes are my favorite chocolate mud cake with lots of 70% dark chocolate in the mixture to make them super yummy and moist.

To make a Santa cupcake you need to start off with a base of ivory or skin colour covering the top surface of the cupcake.

You can see here that I have mixed up some bright red and some black fondant icing too.

Cut some skinny white crescent moon shapes, using the same size of circle cutter as you used to cut out the circle covering the top of your cupcake. This picture shows how you make the crescent shape - you use the same cutter twice, moving it about a centimetre on the second go. The crescent shape will be Santa's beard.

Fix the crescent shape in 'beard' position at the bottom of the 'face', attaching it with a few drops of water.

You also need a long triangle of red fondant (hat); a thin strip of white fondant (hatband); two small elliptical white shapes (moustache); a ball of red fondant (nose); and two tiny balls of black fondant (eyes).

Here are all the shapes lined up ready to go on the face:

After you have attached the beard, position the moustache pieces and attach.

These are my little santas with their beards and moustaches attached.

Next punch three small holes in the face where the nose and eyes will go.

Leave plenty of room at the top of the face for the hat.

Attach the nose and eyes into the holes with tiny drops of water (beware! If you get water around the edges of black fondant it will run, and your santa may look like he's been wearing mascara and crying).

Finally, stick the red triangle onto the upper third of the face and attach the white band on top. Fold the red 'hat' over onto the face, and if you like, roll a little white ball of fondant as a pompom for the tip of the hat and stick on. You can snip this with little scissors or a knife to make it look 'fuzzy'.

Happy Christmas!!

White chocolate mud cupcakes - Moon and Stars and Stripey with bows

After a boring week at home recuperating from the worst cough in the universe, I was definitely in the mood to experiment with some white chocolate mud cupcakes and some free form fondant decorating.

These are some 'Moon and Stars' cupcakes of my own design.

To make the Moon and Stars cupcakes, I started with a very bright light blue fondant which makes up the sky.

I was much more careful with my edging this time around and I got a neater result which I was pleased with.

I used a larger circle cutter than I needed and this gave me enough 'extra' at the edges to wrap the fondant down to where the paper wrapper starts.

You can see in the picture at the top that this gives you a nice neat domed look. Yay!

I used my smallest circle cutter to cut the moon by first cutting a full circle, then moving the cutter inwards and cutting a crescent shape out of the circle.

I was delighted to be able to use for the first time a little set of three star-shaped punch cutters (they have a button on top that you can press to remove the cut-out fondant when you have cut the shape- you need this because the pieces are so small and fiddly to remove by hand).

I freeformed the star patterns but you could do real constellations if you are able to (I would have liked to do this but I only know the Southern Cross and Orion's Belt, and I'm a bit shaky on the Belt one). 





I also did some stripey 'presents' with black bows. Sally Alps showed me how to make this pattern in my fantastic Alps & Amici cupcake decorating class in Launceston last November.

To make the stripes, you roll out one colour of fondant - here, the light pink - to slightly thicker than normal.

Separately, roll out the other colour and cut it into think stripes using a ruler and a sharp knife.

Lay the stripes out on top of the first rolled fondant piece and gently roll them in, in the direction of the stripes.

Then cut circles from the stripey fondant.

The lines go a bit crooked but the effect is still good, especially if you then put a darker coloured bow across at an oblique angle.

This is the 'production line' of cupcakes getting their bows.

Firstly you put a plain strap of black fondant across the cupcake.

Then you make a little bow from another strap, by folding both the ends over into the middle and fastening them by wrapping another small strap over the join.

Finally, make a small hole in the top of the bow and press a silver cachou into it.

The final product ready to go.

I had baked the cupcakes in some new bright coloured wrappers (thanks, downsizing Mum!) and I tried to match the icing colours to the wrapper. This worked particularly well with these bow cupcakes because by chance the wrappers were a very close match to the dark pink stripes.

Planet Cake, Sally Alps and fondant rolling

 Last November I did my first actual cake decorating course (I have always been totally self taught). It was fantastic and sorted out all sorts of lingering questions I had had about fondant decorating, which I had never been confident to use. I went to Sally Alps of Alps & Amici in Launceston and the course was Christmas Cupcake Decorating. Sally learned her art from the famous Paris of Sydney's Planet Cake. I have since got hold of the new book Planet Cake Cupcakes which is a great buy and very informative.

My eureka moments from the day were:

It is PERFECTLY OK to use commercial or 'ready-to-roll' (RTR) fondant, in fact most great decorators use it! Yay, now I don't have to feel guilty for not making my own fondant icing.

There are a few different types of fondant icing available and you can get it in the supermarket or at places that sell cake decorating supplies. They vary in stiffness and taste so you need to experiment with what works for you. In Coles you can buy Orchard White Icing in a cardboard box from the flour/sugar aisle, this is RTR fondant.I always wondered whether it was or not.

The best colourings are paste or gel colours. The liquid ones that are everywhere get really messy when you try to knead them in because they're too wet. The gel ones are a bit harder to get (go to a cake decorating place) but they give a very intense rich colour and don't make the fondant so sticky. They cost about $5 per colour and it is so worth buying a range of colours so that you can be a bit varied.

Cover the top of the cupcake with a layer of ganache that you can hot-knife so that it is totally smooth - this gives you a beautiful flat surface to work with and means your rolled-out fondant can be quite thin and still be smooth.

Comb good toyshops for kids' modelling tools and rolling pins... this is the perfect scale to use for cupcake sized decorating.


And keep collecting pastry cutters of all shapes and sizes because you can form the basics of lots of cute designs by using the cutters - for instance look at the snowman above which is made from different sized circles.