Creative Cupcakes

I've been spending a lot of time reading baking blogs lately. I flip through picture after picture of flawless, beautifully designed cakes. After a while I began to think if so many people can make such amazing cakes, why can't I? I was inspired to attempt to make my own fondant, and decided cupcakes were the best way to ease my way into professional bakerhood. I read tons of tutorials, pieced together all the tips and was confident my results would be blog-worthy. Along the way I saw a tutorial for making a topsy-turvy wedding cake and thought, why make cupcakes when I could proceed straight to this masterpiece?

Well, I made my fondant AND my cupcakes, and while I was successful, I'm here to tell you that making fondant is NOT easy. My enthusiasm slowly waned as I approached hour 42 of kneading sticky marshmallow goo. Just a tip- when the recipe says to sift the powdered sugar, if says so for a reason. Getting tired and haphazardly dumping the sugar into the bowl doesn't save you ANY time. My bruised knuckles will serve as a reminder to sift every tiny hard little ball of evil out of that bag. Did I say evil? I meant sugar... Anywho, the fondant came out lovely after all that hard work. Then came the decorating, at which time I remembered that I have very little creative/artistic ability. I was at a loss to come up with designs for 24 cupcakes. With help from my best baking buddy, we were able to design 19 of them before we decided that we didn't care anymore.

They were far from perfect, but still quite cute and very yummy. My coworkers were impressed (though the compliments may have been simply to procure baked goods in the future..) and other friends all loved them. After finishing the cupcakes I initially felt as if making fondant may have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but have decided that if made a day or two before actual bake & decorate time, the affair would be much more enjoyable. And I will definitely sift every ounce of sugar. Maybe twice. And hopefully one day I will have perfected my skills enough to join the ranks of topsy-turvy cake bakers. Hope you like the photos! (The fondant was too involved to worry myself with photojournaling, so these are it.)