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.

Other cupcake designs... Native animals and simple flowers

What do you serve when members of the Greens political party are coming to the office for afternoon tea? Well it's simple - cupcakes with bright green icing and some sort of natural environment theme ... Like these possum cupcakes.

 The possum pattern bears more than a passing resemblance to an old Wilderness Society sticker design that read 'Wilderness not woodchips' and had a bright red possum next to the slogan. I always loved the way that the sticker was the shape of the possum's back and tail which formed a perfect circular curve. Those stickers have long disappeared and I could only find a tiny image of one on the webs - I based this possum design on that graphic.

To begin your possum cupcake, cover your ganached cupcake (see earlier posts) with a good bright green coloured fondant. Roll the fondant out and cut it with a large circle cutter - choose a cutter size a bit bigger than the cupcake. Stick it in place with a few drops of water and burnish to make it smooth.












Then roll out some brown fondant and, with a circle cutter a few sizes smaller, cut a circle, a small heart and a tiny diamond. The circle will be the body, the heart will be the head and the diamond will make the ears of the possum.
Starting on the circle, use a cutter another size down to cut a semicircle about 3mm from the edge - this will be the tail - and, at the point this semicircular line finishes on the left side, cut two semi circles as shown to provide the outline of the legs and feet. Discard the rest of the infill area fondant. Trim the fondant in a diagonal line up past the 'front leg'.
Then, using the small heart cutter, cut a heart and hand shape it into a triangle shape, sitcking it on the body point down to make the head.

Cut the tiny diamond out of fondant, then cut this in half and hand shape each half to make a little ear. Stick these on with a drop of water.
Make the eyes - roll two small balls of white fondant, and two smaller balls of black fondant for the pupils. Stick the 'eyeballs' onto the face, about halfway down, with a drop of water (it helps if you make a small dent for each eye and nest the eyeball into the dent). Then make a tiny indentation into the white eyeball and drop the black 'pupil' into it, fixing with a very tiny drop of water.








I experimented and found that these possums are more effective with no nose or mouth. After all the big thing about possums is their huge staring eyes. I think it looks almost more effective if the eyes are slightly uneven. Your possums will look suitably alarmed and slightly mad.

For a bit of variety it's good to throw in some flower cupcakes - this continues the natural theme but brightens up the colour scheme a bit. 

These are the simplest of fondant-iced cupcakes to decorate. You need some circles slightly bigger than the cupcake top, and then some cut out shapes of flowers, hearts or anything else in varying sizes.

These are quick to decorate and can help you to use up colours that you have previously mixed but can't find a use for.

I made these with a pink base and mixed green, blue and yellow flowers.

Enjoy nature and cupcakes together with these environmentally friendly designs!

Sushi Cupcakes

Looking for a healthy snack? Sushi surely has to be on the menu... these cupcakes (or logs to be precise) are fondant-covered chocolate mud cake, cunningly disguised as healthful Japanese bite size sushi pieces.

I had huge fun making them, but it is not a quick undertaking. If you plan on creating some sushi cupcakes, give yourself three or four hours for the decorating process!

The first stage is to cut up your cake... in this case I used a rich chocolate mud cake, but it doesn't matter what type of cake as long as it has density and a fairly fine texture so that you can cut it and shape it easily.
I aimed for logs that were approximately the same size and shape as sushi pieces. Make them a little thinner and lower than you want to end up with - remembering the icing will make them bigger.

Then you need to roll out some white fondant icing and, having measured your chocolate cake logs, check with a ruler that your fondant is wide and long enough to cover the top and all four sides of the log in one piece.

Then dab a little water on the top and sides of the log to stick the fondant firmly, and drape it over the log, working the corners gently and cutting the edges to size. If you need to fold the corners over and there is a visible join, don't worry because this will all be hidden by your RICE GRAINS.

This is possibly the slowest and most ridiculously detailed fondant decoration I have done. I cut individual white fondant logs the size of rice grains (seen here larger than actual size). There reason it's slow is not because of the difficulty - they're not difficult at all. You do, however, need a lot of them. Like, hundreds.

As you are chopping up your rice grains, drop them in a pile of cornflour to make sure they don't stick to each other. They will dry and harden quickly - this is ok - it makes them easier to work with.

When you have enough rice grains, hold one fondant covered log gently by its top and base, and paint it with water to make it sticky, then sprinkle the grains onto it. They should adhere unevenly, like in this picture.
Do one side at a time, all four sides, but don't do the top because you will be covering that with fish, prawns etc.





Do all of your logs at once and have them all ready for the topping. If your rice grains become sticky, dredge them in cornflour again.

Then the fun part begins as you start your toppings!

Egg sushi - roll out bright yellow fondant thinly and cut into rectangles with a ruler. Make them slightly wider and longer than the log, and allow them to drape slightly over the corners like in the pic.

Then roll out some black fondant and cut it into strips. This needs to be very thin so that it resembles the paper-thin seaweed band of the real thing. Drape it carefully over the log, fixing it with a tiny drop of water. Beware do not get the water near the edges of the black band, because the colour will run onto the yellow fondant and look yuck.

Next make the sashimi tuna- easy!

Colour some fondant a pinkish red and roll it out to about .5cm thick. Cut a rectangle about the size of the log, then bend it a little to one side to make the shape a bit curved, and score it down the centre lengthways, then at an acute angle in sets of lines coming off the 'spine', like an arrow shape, for the bones.

For this caviar one you need a circle of cake, not a log shape. Cut a circle of cake with a circle cutter and cover the top and sides with white fondant, as described above. Then thinly roll out some black fondant, cut it into a long strip which is the same width as the height of the cake, and wrap it around the cake, using some water to stick it in place. Make sure there is a small amount of black fondant sitting above the top of the cake to act as a container for the 'caviar'.
For the caviar filling, using red fondant, chop small pieces about the size of a pea and roll them into spheres, then stick them on the top of the cake.

 For my personal favorite, the prawn nigiri sushi, you need to hand-sculpt a prawn body in white fondant - do this by making a cone shape, then flattening it and scoring it down the centre. Then roll the knife blade out of the scored line to create two rounded mounds with the scored line in the centre.

Get a separate piece of fondant and cut it roughly into a heart shape, then fashion the prawn's flat pronged tail from it. Score it with thin parallel lines.

Using some liquid food colour, paint the prawn with parallel stripes of yellow and orange. Use a deeper orange for the tail.

These are the prawn tails all laid out to dry after being painted. I laid them with the tail hanging off the edge of the plate so that they would dry in that shape and look really three-dimensional.

For the salmon nigiri, roll out a piece of pinkish red fondant and lay thin parallel stripes of white fondant on it, then roll again to adhere the two together. Cut rectangles the same size as the sushi logs and lay on top of the log, fixing with a drop of water.

Basically do whatever you can think of - I also did some white ones, as you can see here, and just scored them in a fishbone pattern.
A quick note, I also used a spray on culinary glaze with these - available from cake decorating suppliers. I was a bit suspicious of it, but it appeared to work well - it gave a bit of gloss to the sushi without making the colours run.
Enjoy your healthy snack! :-)