Anitabot.com

Adventure Time Cupcakes (For my friend Lauren!)

My friend Lauren’s birthday is coming up and since I’ll be away on vacation at that point, I decided to create a gift for her early.  She shares my love of Adventure Time With Finn & Jake, and even dressed up as Lumpy Space Princess for Halloween. So it was a no-brainer.

I also hadn’t baked since LAST Christmas – over a year! So I decided it was high time that I started practicing my skills again.

I haven’t worked with fondant that much at all, so I decided to make the shapes for 4 characters. There is: Finn, Jake, Lumpy Space Princess and Peppermint Butler. They were the easier shapes to capture. I wanted to do Gunther, the penguin but dying fondant (or icing) black is near impossible.

As with any baking/decorating projects, there were some key learnings:

• I planned and sketched out every shape, and noted the colour I would need. This was good
• I started earlier than planned, and each day I did a little bit more than planned, and it worked out perfectly in the end
• Chocolate cake is crappy because it rips more easily when being frosted
• The medium cupcake liners are TOO small. The cupcakes too easily rose above the liner, and so the fondant shapes didn’t sit nicely within. This is bad.
• The medium cupcake liners made the cupcakes smaller and thus they kind of fit awkwardly into my new cupcake carrier. Lesson learned: USE LESS BATTER IN EXTRA LARGE CUPCAKE LINERS.
• Black frosting is hard to make. Watering down chocolate fudge frosting sucks. It was hard to pipe with as it was the wrong consistency. I should have used royal icing for the consistency – but how would I get it to be black? I don’t know, I’ll have to learn.
• Also, outside of a paring knife, what can I use to cut out freehand shapes from fondant? A scalpel? How do I get a smoother edge?

I’ll explain how I did each character.

First, everything was white fondant that I coloured using Wilton’s gel colours.

Finn: I decided to make two circles of blue – dark for his pants, light for his shirt. The dark blue is a standard round cookie cutter, the light blue is a smaller size. I cut out his hat shape using a paring knife. I also free-hand cut his face. I put the light blue on the dark blue (a little water on the back of fondant and it will stick to other fondant), and then I rolled my rolling pin over to make slight smooshed in. I did the same with his face on his hat, so it looked more ‘inset’. I piped on his face with my horrible black-fudge-frosting mixture that was too watery.

Jake: He just needed yellow and white. I free-handed his jowls. Instead of trying to dye fondant black, I decided to pipe on the blacks of his eyes. Meh! His nose is also piped on.

Lumpy Space Princess: The easiest! I used the standard sized round cookie cutter as a guide, but just free-handed her blobbynes. The yellow star is from a jar of cake decorating sprinkles – I just picked out the yellow ones. I also drew on her face.

Peppermint Butler: White circle for his base, and the same dark blue from Finn with a notch cut out for his pants. The red was free handed inside of a standard cookie cutter face. The buttons and face were free-handed. I actually forgot to put on his little red bow-tie. I thought it would be too hard to cut out such a small shape from fondant, so I then thought I could pipe it on, but there wasn’t much space. (And I didn’t want to make a batch of royal icing just for tiny tiny bow-ties).

I used generic frosting to attach the fondant to the cupcakes…

All in all, it was fairly simple, just a lot of work. I have a lot of fondant leftover so I’m going to be making more things. Practice makes perfect!

Tags: adventure time, baking, decorating, finn, fondant, jake, lauren, lumpy space princess, peppermint butler

Friday Five List-o-Matic: 5 BEST things about Fall(Late Edition)

I flaked on giving you a list this weekend, so I’m making it up to you! Since today IS the first official day of fall, my favourite season, I decided to tell you why!

1) The Smell. Yup, it’s pretty obvious but that crispness in the air that almost hurts my lungs when I inhale – it reminds me of going back to school, possibilities, change, the future and all that can go well. Even though when I was in school I’d start slacking by the 3rd week – those first three weeks were full of so much promise!

2) Sweaters. Sweater weather is the most ideal weather, but it’s not just ANY sweater – it’s hoodies – actually being able to wear the hood I suppose. I wish I had one of those ponchos with pom poms like I had when I was little. You know the kind:

3) Pumpkin Pie/Impending Gingerbread cookies. Not JUST pumpkin pie, but also turkey on thanksgiving and all those wonderful foods. My mom never made Turkey for thanksgiving, and I’d only RARELY get it for xmas. We did have family friends who indulged in this white custom and I loved it. Turkey, gravy, stuffing, potatoes… delicious – but perhaps the crown jewel of this meal is Pumpkin Pie. I eat so much of this stuff!  The best part is when the pumpkin pie starts to get scarce, I can be calmed by the fact that gingerbread is just around the corner!

4) Crunchy, colourful leaves.  Who doesn’t love this? Nazi’s. That’s who.

5) Halloween. Maybe I’m a secret goth kid… or just a kid… but dressing up in costumes is the best freakin’ idea in the world. No, I’m wrong, it’s the second best. The best idea in the world is BEING REWARDED WITH CANDY for dressing up in costumes. Seriously folks… does it get any better? No. Even if you don’t go trick-or-treating there are lots of benefits:
- Kids look less ugly and even cute
- Discounted halloween candy
- Being able to dress up! For some people this includes being able to dress up as a trollop… but I’m not on that list.

Anywho, that concludes my list. I know it wasn’t ground-breaking and well… it’s actually quite obvious because everyone loves fall and probably for the same reasons. Whatever.  I decided to not be a hater like I had been in my previous post.

In other news my friend Triton had a b-day party this weekend and I put together these:

I didn’t put the smarites on it, they migrated from the other cake beside it. This was my 2nd time working with fondant, and the first trying to put it on a cake… ok, well cupcakes. that was easy. The real cake – didn’t turn out so well. Maybe next year.

Tags: autumn, baking, cupcakes, fall, fondant, list