Giant cupcake and mini cupcakes. Who knew two extremes can look so good together? My second attempt at decorating a cake.
This cake was for my second daughter's 7th birthday. She was into all pretty things. Flowers and cupcakes were her favourites. This made it easy to select the theme. But the question was how do I put it together and make the ordinary cupcake look grand.
While browsing the internet for ideas, I came across a large cupcake baking mould and a mini cupcake baking tray. Instantly my creative mind started building concepts for the cake. Rarely we see jumbo cupcakes so why not make it the centerpiece and surround it with mini cupcakes. The contrasting size difference will give an illusion of a wonderland. and make it fun for kids.
The cupcake part was locked in now moving on to flowers. Initially, I was thinking of piping coloured buttercream rosettes on top of cupcakes but then an inner voice said isn't it too obvious? Think of something unpredictable yet achievable. That's when, I suddenly recollected one of the videos where I had seen marshmallows cut diagonally, dipped in coloured sugar crystals, and used as bunny rabbit ears. How good it would be if I use this approach to make flower petals instead. That is it, I got cracking and the result is in the picture.
Wish I had process photos to be able to show you the cake construction better. However, I will try and explain through words.
Making of Coloured sugar crystals
Place sugar in a zip lock bag. Add a few drops of edible colour. Close the bag and shake well to coat all the sugar crystals with the colour. Pour the sugar on a plate and let it dry for a few hours. Coloured sugar crystals are ready. It costed almost nothing.
Making of Petals
I used vegan marshmallows. Medium-sized white ones for a large cupcake and mini white ones for mini cupcakes. It is important that marshmallows are cylindrical in shape. cut marshmallow diagonally using scissors. this will expose the sticky side of the marshmallow. Place the sticky side on the coloured sugar crystals which will stick to the cut side of the marshmallow giving it coloured look.
Top View
The cake is my Chocolate Cake - Vegan baked in giant cupcake mould and mini cupcake tray. Used my buttercream to cover the cake. The recipe for buttercream will be shared soon.
Side View
I made a small batch of green buttercream icing along with beige buttercream icing and piped them along the sides of the large cupcake base to give it a patty pan effect.
The top of the large cupcake was first covered with a layer of white buttercream then placed marshmallow petals in a circular line starting from the bottom layer first. Since buttercream is at room temperature it acts as a binding medium to which marshmallow sticks easily. When placing petals for the second layer, I made sure each petal is placed on top of the joint of two petals of the first layer.
Mini Cupcakes
For mini cupcakes, I placed mini patty pans in the mini cupcake tray and poured the cake batter in it, and baked. For decoration, I followed the same steps as I did for the large cupcake, except used mini marshmallows instead of medium-sized marshmallows. Since I used a pattypan, I didn't pipe buttercream icing on the base of the mini cupcake.
For center of the flower, I sprinkled coloured sugar crystals and carefully placed cachous (edible sugar) pearls on it. This gave that extra glow to the cake.
My daughter was over the moon when she saw this cake and couldn't wait to show it to her friends at her birthday party. The expression of all her friends was priceless when they saw it. That was the best compliment I could get.
Be prepared to see more innovation and creativity in my next cake decoration post. Trust me there are many more to come with more refinement.
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