Critter Cupcakes

Happy Sunday! The rains in Northern California have been impressive over the past few weeks. Torential downpours, hail, flooding, the whole 9 yards. It has made outdoor activities almost impossible but our local CubScouts weathered the rain for a trip to the fish hatchery (and the rain held off for a couple of hours for them too!) and needed a bit of a treat for the trip.

I have made this type of cupcake before but with pretty butterflies on top. Somehow I don't think the boys would have been too happy with butterflies! LOL! So spiders and ladybugs (for those who couldn't make themselves chomp into a spider) became the "critters" for this go-round. Those were piped out of royal icing. The kids were delighted. And they are Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes so the parents were pretty happy too!

The "secret" this week is that you can easily do something very close to this yourself in your own home kitchen without needing a piping bag or tips or much skill. All you have to do is color icing in two colors of green, one a few shades darker than the other. Put those into ziplock bags and cut a small bit of a bottom corner off on each. Now, using the lighter green first, "pipe" dots on to the cupcakes in a random order. Then, using the darker color, fill in the leftover spaces. Finally, you just use a fork and dip it into the icing in a straight up and down manner to create your grass "spikes". After that you just need to put candy bugs or worms on top!

This week I learned a new technique that I will share with you all in the week to come. This one is so easy and beautiful that you will be happily using it for your Easter cakes this year!

And speaking of April! Many of us are watching the preparations for the Royal Wedding which is coming up on April 29th of this year. Well, today they announced who the cake designer will be and what she will be creating! The lucky designer is Fiona Cairns and she will be using the Joseph Lambeth technique on several fruitcakes to create the wedding cake. The Lambeth technique is where they use intricate piping to decorate the cakes. English wedding cakes are not like ours. They don't stack the cakes and the cake inside the fondant or Marzipan covering is a heavy fruitcake. Yup, similar to that stuff your Grandmother has been trying to get you to eat for years. They are not fluffy chiffon type cakes like we have here in the US and while our current trend is clean lines and just a hint of decoration here or there, the Lambeth method . So it's fun to watch the Royal Website for the preparations and see how differently it's done on the other side of "The Pond".

For those interested:

The Royal Website: http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/

Fiona Cairns Website: www.fionacairns.com

Have a great week, I'll see you next Sunday!

Cat