Cupcake Ideas!

Royal Icing Snowman Cupcake: cupcake, # 1, 2, 10, 12 tips, string spaghetti, white stiff consistency royal icing, green thin royal icing, dark brown or black thin royal icing (Tip: you can also pipe snowman mouth, eyes, hat, and buttons white and paint with paste color diluted in lemon extract or clear spirits). Pipe the base of the snowman with #12 tip, exerting pressure to create a round shape. Let set a minute or two, then pipe the middle with #12 tip. Insert a small length of spaghetti for arms (Helen's idea. I used a short length of floral wire in the snowman photo). Pipe head of the snowman with #10 tip . Pipe a #2 line around the head of the snowman for the brim of the hat and a bulb in the center for the hat. Use cornstarch dusted fingers to mold into a hat shape if necessary. Pipe #1 mouth, eyes, nose and buttons and scarf with #1 tip.

Ideas: The cupcake snowman scene can be embellished with a candy cane, gumdrop, white edible glitter, coconut, sugar sprinkles, or placed in your gingerbread holiday house scene. You can sprinkle your snowman cupcake with a dust of confectioner's and display your snowman with the lovely holly cupcake wrapper shown here from Fancy Flours.
Fancy Flours has a lot of neat cupcake wrappers in seasonal themes. Personally love their spiderweb, butterfly and holly cupcake wrapper. I also love their vintage cookie wafer papers. Real neat to apply to your cookies.

Hope you liked the how-to directions.

Dina
Organizer

Cupcake Designed by Dina, Organizer NYC Cake Decorators

Royal Icing Violet in a Flower Pot: cupcake, #7 nail, and a small unglazed terracotta flower pot (washed in hot soapy water), #1, 59s, 104, and grass/hair tips; medium consistency leaf green royal icing, medium consistency violet royal icing, thin consistency yellow icing, small six 30 green floral wires, and small amount of green floral tape.

Base- pipe three #3 beads on wax paper on your work surface. While still wet, hook a small length of wire and place hook down into the bead. Let dry. Affix a small wax square to your flower nail. Petals -Pipe three violets on the flower nail with violet icing, pipe #1 yellow centers, and and leave to dry on a flower former. (Tip: Re-purpose a paper towel holder by cutting it lengthwise and pressing open. Now you have your flower former for free)! Leaves: Pipe three #104 violet leaves directly on the wires. Let dry. Attach the violets when dry on the bases with a tiny dab of icing. Take a small length of floral tape and wire the three flowers together. The attach the 3 leaves. Place cupcake into the terracotta flower pot. Pipe grass over the top of the cupcake with grass tip and green icing. Cut the wires of your violet spray and attach a toothpick with a small length of floral tape. Push into cupcake. (Only the toothpick should pierce the cupcake). Sprinkle with edible glitter, place a small royal icing or gumpaste ladybug or butterfly on the rim of the flower pot.

Ideas: The royal icing violet cupcake is a great choice for a garden party, gardener, gardening club event, Easter or Spring event, women's group, or Victorian Tea Party. Several of these flower pot cupcakes would be great lined up on a table, as favors, or as an unusual place setting. Why not bake your mini-cake in the unglazed terracotta flower pot? (see baking 911 for directions on how to treat the unglazed terracotta flower pot). The flower pot in the photo was purchased at Michaels Craft Store in NYC.

Sunsational Sunflower Cupcake Idea!

Cupcake Decorated by Dina, Organizer, NYC Cake Decorators

Royal Icing Sunflower Cupcake: 1 sandwich cookie, cupcake, # 3, 7, 3 and 352 tips, #7 flower nail, edible glitter/colored sugar, medium consistency royal icing (Wilton Lemon Yellow paste mixed with a little Wilton Brown paste was used for the petals and Wilton Brown paste was used for the flower center). Separate the sandwich cookie. Now you can make two sunflowers!

Place a small square of wax paper on a #7 nail, put a dab of icing on the wax paper and place the icing side of the cookie on your dab. Now put yellow icing in your bag fitted with #352 leaf tip and pipe around the rim of the cookie. Then pipe another yellow of leaves in between the first row and so on around the cookie, lifting the bag up slightly as you go around the cookie. When you feel you have the right amount of space left for your center, stop piping the leaves and start piping #7 beads around the outside of the center continuing until the beads fill the center. Overpipe a small circle of beads with a #3 tip. Sprinkle flower with edible glitter and dry.

Ideas: The royal icing sunflower cupcake is great choice for casual summer and fall gatherings, and can be used as a distinctive place setting or tasty favor wrapped with clear cellophane. Change the color of the flower to red with dark brown center and you have a spicy addition to a colorful tablescape. Want sparkle? Fill the center with colorful dragees. A white flower piped this way with silver or gold dragees is a lovely accent for your holiday table. This flower can also be piped with crusting buttercream.

Cupcake Design Class using Beginner Techniques

A wonderful day to eat and decorate cupcakes! It was the first time three members ever picked up a pastry bag and a refresher for some. Isabel demonstrated the Wilton Rose and poinsettia. We piped rose buds, half roses, and the Wilton Rose with royal icing. Then we split an oreo cookie and used one side of the cookie to pipe a royal icing sunflower. Members were particularly interested in the figure piped snowman and royal icing violet spray. Enjoy!

Tips from a Vintage Cake Decorating Book

The Art of Cake Decorating by Hildegard Schulte, published by Schulte School of Cake Decorating and Candy Making in 1958, is a vintage book that recently became available to the NYC Cake Decorating Meetup thanks to Diane Shavkin an accomplished cake designer, cake show judge, and vendor. Although 50 years old, this book has a lot of timely information about color.

Ms. Schulte reminds all cake decorators to study the coloring of real flowers, leaves, and stems.
(In fact, top sugarcrafters often purchase the live flower to study when making a gumpaste replica). Ms. Schulte states that in nature, flowers, buds and leaves are not a flat color but several shades of the same color. She suggests that when making leaves for roses, add a little red color to the green to give a more natural appearance.

Member Wedding and Anniversary Cakes

Many of our members are owners of custom cake businesses or work for noted pastry chefs in the business. This summer was a particularly successful one for our members and they created some fabulous cakes!

Laura made the beautiful pale blue butterfly cake. So light and airy it has a really joyous vibe about it. What's really amazing is that Laura has been decorating less than five years.

Carmen designed this fabulous square wedding cake. Carmen comes from a line of cake decorators--and it shows.

Diana's red butterfly cake is simply stunning. Diana works for a noted pastry chef in Hoboken, New Jersey and her "porcelain" cake was recently featured in American Cake Decorating Magazine!

Vicki is the veteran cake decorator who created the golf anniversary cake. I think this cake could also inspire a fabulous groom's cake. Enjoy!

What Have We Been Up To This Summer?

What has been baking in our ovens this summer? Members have been busily baking and decorating a number of stunning, tasty cakes for family and friends.

Laura created red graduation cap and book cakes and Isabel decorated the precious baby n' a blanket cake. These are only two of the many cakes created by members of the Meetup.

If you are interested in networking with a diverse and fun group of folks who are crazy about cake, why not join our club!

Sweet Regards,

Dina