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.

Oink oink, happy eating - and if you were wondering, OBVIOUSLY all these piggywigs are free range.

A pirate with eyepatch and earring

Pirates are fun to make and not very hard - thanks Paris from Planet Cake for this design which is in the book Planet Cake Cupcakes. 

This little fellow is a bit grumpy but not very scary. I will have to work on more scary facial expressions. 

The Planet Cake design had only one strap coming off the eyepatch (the one on the left) but I thought he needed a bit of balance so I put another one on the other side. The straps are a bit too wide and next time I will cut them finer. 

The cut on the cheek adds a bit of interest to what is a very simple design, this was just painted on with red food colouring and a fine paint brush. 

If you were doing more than one pirate it would be fun to do the headscarves all different colours.

Happy face sad face

Who knew 'skin tone' would be so hard to get right? The first cupcakes that I did of people were for Christmas - I did a Santa with a big white beard and red hat, and an elf with little pointy ears and a stripey hat. I used a light pink colour for their faces and they looked all flushed and kind of drunk... like they had had one too many glasses of brandy left out on Christmas eve. No pics of those ones, sorry (I must've had one too many brandies myself and forgot to photograph them).
.

 So the next time I tried faces, I used 'ivory' colouring. Now my little cupcake people look anaemic and sad. Grrr.

Anyway, this is an anaemic sad baby in a beanie. One of my friends asked me what on earth I did to him to make him so sad. Maybe it's the prospect of being eaten?












So I started experimenting with other facial expressions (although secretly I really like the sad anaemic baby).
Have to credit Planet Cake Cupcakes with a lot of the ideas for expressions. I modified some and as I got more confident I started riffing on the theme a bit. FUN.


The ones below need only one pastry cutter, a large round, which you use both to cut out the face and to cut out the hair or hat. You can then go to town styling the hair in different ways.

 

 The hair is scored with a knife and hand cut into a 'style'. 

The eyes are tiny hand-rolled white pieces of fondant with even smaller hand-rolled pieces of black fondant. 

The easiest way to position and attach the eyes is to make a pair of indentations using the end of a paintbrush or something similar - you need a tool where the end is rounded and approximately 3mm diameter. Then dab the tiniest drop of water inside the indentation to stick the 'eyeball' in place - too much water and it will come out the side of the 'eyeball' - and no, it doesn't look like tears, it just looks messy. Then press the white fondant into the hold and tap it gently to flatten it. For the pupil, make a tiny indent in the eyeball - be consistent and make it in the same place on each eyeball so you don't get a crosseyed cupcake - and press the black fondant in. It takes a steady hand to position the fondant, I guess you could use a fine pair of tweezers if you have trouble.

The nose is a small hand rolled ball of fondant of the same colour as the face. Make a little hole with the end of your paintbrush in the centre of the face, where you want to position the nose. Then roll the ball of fondant between thumb and forefinger to make it slightly conical. Moisten the narrow end and fasten it into the hole.

Mouths are really tricky to get right. I have found that using the smallest size of circle cutter is the most reliable way to make a nice even smile or frown. 

The simplest expression is a surprised one, like the girl with the ponytail above. The mouth is just a tiny indentation from a sharp pointed tool (if you don't have any pastry tools, a miniature screwdriver set is a good substitute - use the smallest philips head in the set).

The earrings are made of cachous, those silver ball decorations you can get everywhere. Supermarkets seem mostly to sell medium sized cachous, the ones I used here are small ones that came in a 5-part cake decorating shaker with other things like chocolate sprinkles etc. 

Freckles are painted on with a thin paintbrush and brown gel colouring (see previous posts for differences in working with gel as opposed to liquid colourings). 

The cheeks are dusted with an amazing substance that some people call rose petal dust, it is basically a deep pinkish red powder colour that comes in a tiny plastic tube, you get it from cake decorating supply places, about $5 a tube. You mix it with cornflour to dilute the colour and then brush it on with a soft wide brush - like a makeup brush (if you have a clean new one that is). Then you can blow gently on it to remove the excess powder. A really simple tool but it adds a lot to the look of the cupcake. 

Toadstools, playing cards and halloween

These are designs I made up (as opposed to my usual practice of stealing designs from Planet Cake and the interwebs).
 

I got the idea for the toadstools from some tiny little sugar toadstools that I found at The Mill Providore in Launceston ages ago. I planned to use them but then thought it might be more effective if I made my own toadstools out of fondant, so that the texture would be consistent with the green 'grass' they were on.

The stalk is a small cone of white fondant rolled in the palm of your hand. The top of the toadstool is a hemisphere of red fondant that is hollowed out inside - you can press a fingertip into it to hollow it.

I also used the end of a small paintbrush to indent a small hollow in the underside of the red piece, so that you can 'nest' the stem into it and provide a more secure join. Moisten the join with a drop of water to make it stick fast.

I used white hundreds and thousands for the toadstool's spots.

 I thought that playing cards would be really effective and simple, but they were harder than I thought and I wasn't happy with the result. I am not very good at painting on letters, and my cutters to make the hearts and spades weren't really in proportion to the size of the 'playing card'.

A better idea might be to do the whole top of the cupcake in white, and just paint the letter and stick the hearts/spades directly onto it.

 It's really annoying when the cupcake wrapper starts to pull away from the cake and won't stick back on - it looks messy and I haven't found a way to stop it happening.

I think they would be more effective as a big group, but the colours are quite harsh and 'un-food-like' which bothers me a bit. FAIL.















While I was on poisonous substances and gambling, I thought I'd detour to Halloween and show you some quick and dirty mini cupcakes I made a while back, non fondant decorated but you could easily do these from fondant:

The icing was a plain chocolate buttercream for the pumpkin ones and a plain white glace icing (just icing sugar and water) for the skulls.

The pumpkins were hand cut from rolled marzipan that had been coloured orange - I used liquid colourings because I hadn't yet discovered gel colourings.

I got lazy with the skulls and used plastic favours that I bought from a party shop. I hate using non edible stuff on cakes but I was in a hurry and couldn't work out how to make them. If I did these again I would try to make them from white fondant.

I guess if you were dedicated you could make a mould from these plastic ones and use the mould to make sugar skulls??

Anyone got any other ideas for Halloween?