Animal cupcakes for RSPCA Cupcake Day

Last week was Cupcake Day for the RSPCA which for an animal and cupcake lover has to be one of the most exciting days of the year!
This year I inveigled my work colleagues to participate in running a cupcake stall for the day, and all the money raised went to help the little animals at the RSPCA.

This is what our stand looked like, although there were heaps more cupcakes than you can see in the pic. Oh happy day.















I wanted to do fondant animal decorations - you can see them all together on the circular tiered stand in the pic. As I needed to do quite a few I tried to make them simple. I ended up with tigers, elephants, sheep, dogs, ducks on ponds, and pigs.
Some may say that the RSPCA in Australia would rarely have much to do with the first two, but I say the RSPCA must be prepared for ANYTHING.

The tigers were very popular. They had quite happy, cheerful faces and I was pleased with their flower-stamen whiskers.

The elephants were proud of their chunky trunks and big tusks.

The ducks floated on little blue lakes, with grass and flowers at the edges.

... And the puppies were a bit messy, and didn't look like great brains, but they co-existed happily with all the others.

For all the animal cupcakes I started off with a dense, moist chocolate mud cupcake that I coated with ganache. I then hot knifed the ganache to give it a perfectly smooth surface. These cupcakes have had their ganache finished and set and are ready to go.












I premixed my fondant colours, estimating how much I would need to make about 10 of each animal.

For the tiger, you need a large circle of bright orange fondant, about 3-4mm wider around the edges than the top of the cupcake; two little balls of orange fondant, flattened and rolled with your fingers, to make the ears; nine black triangular stripes; a small ivory circle; a smaller hand-shaped black pyramid; and tiny balls of white and black fondant for the eyes.

Cover the cupcake with the orange circle and burnish to get a perfect flat surface. Stick the ivory circle in the centre with a dot of water.

Stick the black pyramid in the centre of the ivory circle. This is the nose.
With a black food colouring pen or using a thin brush and some black food colour, draw two lines coming down from the nose, then curving upward towards the cheeks.

Stick on the black stripes, points facing inward, with drops of water, and stick the ears on. Make holes for the eyes with the end of a small paintbrush, and poke some tiny holes in the ivory 'muzzle' with a sterilised needle.

Finally, roll two white balls for the eyes and two smaller black balls for the pupils, and stick them in. Cut some cake decorating, flower stamens in half and stick them into the needle holes in the muzzle for the whiskers.

Roarrrr!!

For the elephant you need a large grey circle, two grey oblongs, a sausage-shape for the trunk, two white cones for the tusks and black and white balls for the eyes.

Attach the circle to the top of the cupcake and burnish until smooth. Shape the sausage into a trunk - flatten the top end slightly so that it sits a bit flatter on the cake, and make the end of the trunk slightly concave, pushing two holes in it with the end of a small paintbrush. Attach it to the middle of the cupcake with a drop of water.

Next attach the oblongs - these are the elephant's ears. Put some rose petal dust on the cheeks with a soft brush (OK I know elephants don't really have pink cheeks, but cupcake elephants do).

Stick the tusks one on either side of the trunk.

Make two holes for the eyes just above the trunk, then roll two small balls of white fondant for the whites of the eyes and stick in the holes. Roll two tiny balls of black fondant for the pupils and stick onto the eyeballs.

These are the entire herd of elephants stampeding across the table.

For the ducks, you need a ball of yellow fondant about the size of a walnut. Roll this into an oblong shape and then hand shape it to become the body of the duck.
With a smaller ball of fondant, roll an oval shape for the duck's head and stick in place with a drop of water.
Roll a tiny cone of orange fondant for the beak and stick in place. Then cut some small flat triangles and stick these on the sides of the duck for the wings. Use a piercing tool to make tiny holes for the eyes.

Cover a cupcake with pale blue fondant and stick the duck on, slightly to one side.

Make a cone of bright green fondant and snip the top of it with scissors (I used sterilised nail scissors). Snip about four times, to make a spiky clump of 'grass'.

Stick the grass onto the edge of the cupcake with a drop of water, then fix a flower beside it (I haven't shown how to make these here, but they're really simple: roll some coloured fondant about 2mm thick, stamp out some shapes with a mini flower cutter and use a balling tool to curve the shape upwards. Roll a ball of fondant in a contrasting colour and stick in the centre).

To tell the truth, I wasn't 100% happy with the ducks. The shape wasn't quite right. But I liked the colours and will work on the shapes next time.

For the dog, you need to start by hand-shaping a piece of fondant about the same size and shape as a human nose. You then stick this directly to the ganached surface of the cupcake.

Then cut a large brown circle, about 4mm wider on all sides than the cupcake top. Moistening the top of the cupcake with water, stick the circle down and carefully smooth it over the nose-shape until you get an even finish. This is the dog's snout.

Make a little oval of black fondant (like a little jellybean - in fact you could use black Jellybellys). Stick it on the end of the snout to make the nose. Then paint or just slice a vertical line underneath it, and a smile line beneath that.

Roll out some brown fondant and cut out two oval shapes. Stick them on and bend them in half like in this pic, to make the ears.

Make the eyes from black balls of fondant - or you can make white eyeballs and black pupils.

I also made some dogs with ivory coloured spots - I think these ones were better than the plain ones.

I have shown how to make the piggies and the sheep in other posts but I wanted to show how the rose petal blush goes on. You only need a little and you put it on with a clean, soft brush.
You can use a makeup brush, but be sure to use it only for this purpose so that you don't run the risk of getting real makeup on the cupcakes.

Happy Cupcake Day - thanks to all our customers who gave us their hard-earned dollars for a good cause.