Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Cupcakes for Kids: Panda Cupcakes and Moneky Cupcakes

Decorating cupcakes for children's birthday parties are fun; there are so many colour options and so many different ways to decorate them! 

I was asked to make cupcakes for the birthday party of twin girls. One of the girls liked vanilla cake and panda bears, but her sister liked chocolate cake and monkeys. So I gave them both! Cupcakes are a great way to individualize the dessert for each birthday girl.

Both animals were quite easy to make using coloured fondant. For the monkey cupcakes I mixed skin-coloured food colouring into white fondant to create the facial features (I may have added a drop or two of brown food colouring). I used chocolate fondant for the rest of the head.  This created a nice contrast and black edible marker completed the look. 

To speed up the process of cutting the rounded heart shape for the monkeys' faces, you can use a heart-shaped cutter, then use a rounded cutter (or a round drinking glass turned upside down) to trim off the heart's point to round out the monkey's chin.


For the panda cupcakes, white and black fondant is all you need!  Simply use a drinking glass, bowl or cutter in the same size as the cupcakes to cut fondant circles.  Then cut two upper edges off to create the shape of the head (as indicated in the picture to the right).

Use the back end of a large piping tip to cut the half circles for the ears. To cut the egg shape of the eyes, I used the back end of a small metal piping tip, which was already squished into the right shape (thanks to my dishwasher!).

Fondant is time-consuming when making cupcakes, but well worth it! 

And be sure to add a nice layer of buttercream or chocolate truffle under the fondant for taste. You can even scoop out a portion of the cupcake and add chocolate truffle, icing with chocolate chips, pudding or whatever filling you like to increase the tastiness of your cupcakes. Click here for a great milk chocolate truffle recipe.

Happy Baking!

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