Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeen!!!!!

.....I prefer the treats, obviously!

So, after a long evening of making my halloween cupcakes and fondant shapes, I learned a few things:

• Cupcakes are small, thus the figures should be small. Mine were larger and that's a pretty big mouthful of fondant.
• The first bullet point leads to this one: I should flavor my fondant with just a little bit of vanilla, because it tastes kind of plain.
• Black fondant is the hardest thing to work with. It was stickier than the white fondant and I had to use a lot of powdered sugar. Then the powdered sugar wouldn't come off of it no matter how I tried. Annnnnd it stained my hands and the counter, gr.
• Regular grocery store frosting doesn't work very well in a piping bag. Not only was it runny and sloppy but there isn't enough to fully frost 20 cupcakes... I learned that the hard way and some only have a little bit on them just to hold the topper in place.
• It took about 3 hours to craft 11 pieces, so I need to speed up a little or my creations are going to take all day. 
• The edible glue is awesome!! It sticks perfectly the first time. I only had a little bit of trouble sticking the black eyes to the orange pumpkin. It slipped just the tiniest bit and the black leaked onto the orange.
• In fact, my new tools proved extremely useful. I haven't used them all but I will eventually.
• I haven't experimented with homemade cupcake batter or icing yet so they taste the same as the first ones. I'll work on that next! 

The ghost was nearly impossible to stand up on a cupcake so he didn't make it on top of any. :(:( Baking tip #4: Don't use toothpicks!!! I used them with small marshmallows to attempt to make the ghost sit up straight but it didn't work at all. The toothpick punctured the marshmallows and came through the top of the ghost's head. I struggled with the ghost for the longest time trying to get it to work but then just scrapped it altogether and stood it up on its own fondant body which worked better than I thought it would. I saw a few YouTube videos that used two large marshmallows isntead to drape the fondant over. I'll definitely try that next time. The only thing I've found that toothpicks are good for are testing the middle of your cupcakes to make sure they're done all the way. At least they're good for something!

I didn't have any good pictures of the witch hat on top of the cupcakes, so this one shows its good side!

Also, I loved the orange and black cupcake holders, they're too cute. Overall, they were a lot of fun to make and I can't wait until I can create some more!



Until later,

Baker in Training