Baby Shower Cupcakes//Working with Fondant (Lots of pics!)

Baby showers and weddings are some of the best occasions for cupcakes. There's no slicing or plating involved, you can just grab one and eat! Who doesn't love that? I also really love making cupcakes for events like these because there's so much you can do with  the theme/design of the cupcakes. This past weekend my friend Ramona had a baby shower, and I made 3 dozen cupcakes for the celebration. She is having a baby boy, so of course I decorated the cupcakes with blue accents, which I made out of fondant.

Half the cupcakes were vanilla with raspberry curd filling, and the others chocolate with chocolate mousse filling. With bigger gatherings like a baby shower, it's good to provide a mix of flavors so there's something for everybody (but how could you NOT like chocolate?? it's literally the greatest substance that has ever existed ever...but, I digress). I had never made raspberry curd before, and the recipe is a little tricky, but I think it turned out great and paired well with the vanilla cupcakes.

So I will post pics and recipes for the fillings below:

Raspberry Filling – Makes 2 cups

Ingredients

·      1 pkg (16 ounces) frozen raspberries packed in sugar, thawed

·      1/3 cup granulated sugar (2/3 cup if raspberries packed w/o sugar)      

·      3 tablespoons cornstarch

·      1 teaspoon lemon juice

Directions

1.      Drain raspberries, reserving liquid. Add enough water to liquid to equal 1 1/4 cups.

2.      In large saucepan, combine liquid, sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice; mix well.

3.      Heat and stir until mixture boils and thickens. Cool completely.

4.      Stir thawed raspberries into cooled mixture.

      Just a couple notes on this recipe, take care not to let the mixture boil longer than a few seconds or it will taste yucky and start to congeal. Seriously, I made that mistake with my first batch and I'm almost positive I recreated the fake guts they use on The Walking Dead. Nasty. Anyways, when cooked properly, here is what you should have before you add the thawed raspberries.

Next, I made the chocolate mousse filling. I use this filling all the time because it's delicious and super easy to make.

Ingredients

·         1 – 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk

·         2 – 1 oz. squares unsweetened chocolate, melted

·         1/3 cup cold water

·         1 – 3.9 oz. package instant chocolate pudding mix

·         1 cup heavy cream, whipped

·         1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

Directions

    1.  In a large bowl, mix together sweetened condensed milk and melted chocolate.

    2.  Gradually stir in the water, then instant pudding until smooth. Chill for at least 30 minutes.

    3.  Chill the bowl and mixers you will use to whip the heavy whipping cream for at least one hour in the                freezer before use.

    4.  Add 1/4 tsp cream of tartar to heavy cream before whipping.

    5.  Remove the chocolate mixture from the refrigerator, and stir to loosen. FOLD IN, do not stir, whipped            cream, until completely incorporated, and return to the refrigerator for at least another hour.

Pre-whipped cream mixture

                                     

Anndddd... VOILÀ! MOUSSE!

In a pinch, simply making instant chocolate pudding and folding in the whipped cream will make a perfectly good mousse. However, if you're going for taste and richness, using the condensed milk and melted chocolate is the way to go. Also, it may seem silly to chill the bowl before beating the whipping cream, but I promise it makes a big difference! The warmer the whipped cream gets, the more it liquifies and will make your mousse into a soup. Hmm...chocolate mousse soup. Does that have potential? Maybe not.

I think I've already written more detailed posts about my chocolate and vanilla cupcake recipes, so I'll just breeze on through the pics of them below.

To remove the middle of the cupcakes, I used a neat little tool called a "Cupcake Corer". I bought mine at Homegoods, but I'm guessing you can find them pretty much anywhere. 

Yummy...

Yummier! Everything is better with filling!

Here is my super professional outline of my cupcake arrangement. So beautiful. 

To make the decorations for the cupcakes, I used a simple marshmallow fondant recipe. You can find it here. It can be tricky to work with, but just be patient and make sure to keep your area dusted with powdered sugar and it will be fine.

I dyed the fondant blue for my toppers and baby footprint decorations....if you ever want to dye fondant make sure to wear gloves because the dye will most definitely stain your skin! That being said, also make sure to wear clothes you don't really care about because fondant can get messy!

Here are my finished cupcake toppers. I used a thin wooden dowel to make the cross-hatch pattern and then used edible sugar pearls to add some fanciness. What I like about these decorations is that they are baby shower appropriate (blue blue blue!) but also elegant.

In addition to the fondant decorated cupcakes, I piped some hearts onto 8 of the cupcakes and letters spelling out "Baby AJ" onto the remaining ones. My hearts are a little sad and droopy but for a first effort I guess I'll consider it a win that they resemble hearts even a little.

I had a lot of fun making these cupcakes and I think they turned out really nice. Hopefully I will have some more time in the next week to FINALLY make some vegan cupcakes! :)