I have always been a fan of cupcakes. Not just because they are amazing when stuffed into one's mouth but also because they are little mini works of art. There is nothing like spending an afternoon crafting them to perfection while singing along to the radio at the top of your voice to really restore the soul (if not the neighbours sanity). Luckily if you have driven your neighbours mental in the baking stage they will love you at the eating stage. Cupcakes are just meant to be given away and let’s be honest, we all love a bit of oohing and ahhing over our culinary creations.
In an effort to become a cupcake baker extraordinaire I went off for a lesson with the lovely Jo Taylor of Just Iced Cupcakes. At this session (don’t worry Jo I won’t give all your secrets away) and in my subsequent sugar crafting adventures (and misadventures!) I have discovered a few helpful things for the budding sugar crafter. I’m not saying I will make you into a professional baker but I can at least give you some hints and tips on creating gorgeous homemade cupcakes cheaply and as fast as you can sing though a Glee album.
To get sugar crafting there are only really a few things that you need.
- Some sugar paste. Obviously. Though not quite so easy if, like me, you are a cake decorating novice. There are loads and loads of varieties on the scene and no one likes to look like a cake dunce or end up with piles of sugar paste that they don’t know what to do with. So what you need is flower paste as it dries hard and is good for detailed work. A word of warning, this can dry out fast so you’re best to decide on a colour scheme for your cupcakes and just get a couple of colours or get a white pack and some food colouring (paste food colouring is good) and make up your own colours. I defiantly favour this now as you can get much richer colours – hot pink roses anyone?!
- A teeny tiny rolling pin. Quite frankly these are so cute you should own one anyway just for the sheer fun of it. These are basically smooth plastic rods that you use to roll out the sugar paste. You could also do with a non stick board to roll onto but if you don’t want to get this till later you can use icing sugar on your worktop to prevent the paste sticking but this does dilute the colour of your sugar paste a bit.
- Some cutters. You don’t have to have these, I will show you how to make roses without any equipment at all, but they are really cute. This is where sugar crafting gets very fun indeed and be warned it is easy to go a little crazy and own a whole menagerie of cutter animals.
- Some glitter. Again, this isn’t essential but oh so lovely. I would put glitter on my macaroni if I could get away with it.
And that is really it! There are some great stockists online and with this basic kit you can see if you like it before you start buying all sorts of kit you might not use.
Some good retailers to check out are:
Next time in cupcake school (much better than regualr school isn't it?!), how to make sugar roses. These really do cause people to collapse in awe of your domestic goddess skills, so well worth a try!
No comments:
Post a Comment