Cupcake Fever

I signed up for the Cupcake Fever class at Spun Sugar a few weeks ago and the class was this weekend. It was a lot of fun and I learned quite a few new techniques. First we baked a few kinds of cupcakes. My team made pumpkin, another team made petit four cupcakes. There were also red velvet, spice, and devil's food already baked.

While the cupcakes were in the oven we started on the decorating.

1st up was devil's food cupcakes made to look like hot chocolate. Devil's food cupcakes with chocolate gonache frosting, buttercream for the whipped cream, and a cookie straw. The instructor initially used plastic straws but I suggested the cookie. I'm all about the edible :).

Next was gumpaste leaves painted for the fall. She had made the leaves ahead of time, we painted them. She also demonstrated turning white nonpareils into bronze nonpareils using luster dust.

Peas and Carrots. This one is straight out of Hello, Cupcake! Except we used flavored tootsie rolls instead of Starbursts. I went and picked up a few bags after class from the 99 cent store.
This was the decoration I was must excited about. I saw this on a blog a few days ago and was glad to get a lesson in how to do it properly. I bought the proper tip to do this on my own. My plan is to do it with pumpkin.

Severed finger cupcakes for Halloween. The fingers are also flavored tootsie rolls.

Petit four cupcake with poured fondant icing. This icing is gorgeous. I love the simplicity. I bought the necessary ingredients to do this at home. The coolest thing I learned in class by far was that you can fill a cupcake without piping the filling in post baking. These petit four cupcakes had a dollop of jam put on top of the batter before going in the oven. The jam just sinks into the cupcake during baking without leaving a trace. So simple!

Tuxedo cupcakes. Mine is the retarded one on the right. I'm not so good at the fine tip piping.

My witch!

Freaky-eyed witch.

In the end we got to take one of everything home. I tried the best I could to take ones that I had decorated as I was really proud of some of mine (especially the pie) and ashamed enough of others that I didn't want to leave someone else with them :). I can't wait to try some of these techniques in my kitchen.