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.

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).
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 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.