Piglet and I invited friends over for a bake off session today. One of the activities was making fondant cupcakes. The groups consisted of adults and children.
Ingredients & Tools
A week ago, I bought a large pack of fondant for only RM10 our regular baking supplies shop. We only used half of that for this round.
I bought the fondant cutter/ plunger tools consisting mostly of flowers, leaves, butterflies and modelling tools a few years off ebay when I was in Glasgow. I also had a pack of gel food colouring that I hardly use and a black food marker.
Butter cupcakes
We had 10 plain butter cupcakes. It was slightly overcooked so the top was burnt… I decided to do away with the buttercream or other icing in between the fondant and cupcake because icing needs to stay in the fridge and after taking the fondant out of the fridge, it will condensate and coloured fondant would fade and discolour. Not a pretty sight!
Prepping
The table was cleaned first before we started working with it. Before separating the fondant from the packaging, we oiled our hands.
We also used cornstarch to harden it when shaping. Didn’t use icing sugar as I wouldn’t want it flying all over the house with the fan on. It’s a great recipe for ant invasion.
The air conditioning was on. It can be too soft in warm humid environment yet too hard in cold environment. The texture and feel is so different when I shaped it in Glasgow.
Previously, I had to colour it and coat it with oil and cling film and take a bit at a time to shape to prevent it from drying up. This time around, we just left all of the fondant on the table top for a few hours. It actually harden slightly and was slightly easier to shape as time went along.
Toothpick is used to dip into colour gel.
The gel colour looks like poster colour.
Piglet suggested making a palette so we would not need to keep dipping toothpicks into the gel colour containers. And it would work as a ‘paint’ palette too.
We used vodka to rinse the brush instead of water because it dried out easily and would not dilute the gel colours too much. Water would cause the fondant to be sticky.
Fondant becomes sticky when exposed to water, so water can be used to attach shaped fondant on top of each other.
Creative juices were flowing …
What did we come up with?
Food theme
Bacon, tomato and bulls eye egg
Dim sum dumpling
Hmm… Savoury food on a cupcake? The bacon, tomato and egg was placed in a pan with handles.
Garden Theme
Spider on Red Eyeball
Year 2020
Frog
The spider on red eyeball cupcake would suit a halloween theme.
The frog is wearing a beret. So cute….
Photoshoot
The adults spent some time doing a photoshoot on individual cupcakes and cupcakes. I heard “Froggy, pose… 1,2,3!”
Cleaning up
Used a broom with hard bristle to scrape the dried fondant off the floor before mopping it.
Soaked them in soapy warm water and brushed all of them individually and air dried (& sun dried) them in a colander for 1-2 days.
It was lot’s of fun. Great activity for children, teens and adults.