Cake #21 - Iron Spiderman Cupcakes

Cake # 21 - Iron Spiderman Cupcakes




 

Well, I thought the last request for cupcakes on the fly on graduation weekend was rough but I managed to pull off the Olaf Pullaparts pretty well. Yesterday I was asked to put some cupcakes together for David's actual 7th birthday party at the Trampoline place today at noon. I worked on and off all day, was at the doctor with  kids, cleaned, did laundry, made dinner and yet figured "sure I could do it" -this wouldn't be too hard if I didn't have to go to the store for ingredients. So Uncle Damon swooped over to the store, got me what I needed, and voila, chocolate chip cupcakes were in the oven late last night.

I wanted to do something quick and easy yet a little not-so-boring, even though I didn't have much time and wondered how I could snazz up plain white cake cupcakes. I thought about putting sprinkles inside, but decided on chocolate chips. However when you put chocolate chips in a cake or muffin mix, unless it's super dense, they will sink to the bottom creating a pretty yucky, hard,  yet gooey chocolate crust inside the bottom of your cupcake. So, to reduce the likelihood of sinking, it's best to use mini chips (I didn't have any), crush the chips a little, or coat the regular chips in a light dusting of flour or some cake mix you put aside for this purpose (maybe a Tablespoon.) I have done that several times (and with blueberries in cake too) and it's worked fairly well though sometimes the chips all sink to the exact same level still. So, to ensure a variety of levels of chips, I usually use a few uncoated chips in each cupcake, and a few flour coated ones. I was hoping my strategy worked.

When I went to get them out of the oven, it really didn't work right in the first batch. Both chips, uncoated and coated, pretty much floated on top. They didn't look too bad unfrosted, and they most certainly tasted yummy, but it wasn't what I wanted.

 So batch #2 was made and this time I stirred in the chips just like I would for cookies, and using my ice cream scoop, put them in the paper cups and baked. This time they came out just fine, nicely interspersed in each cupcake. Lesson learned? No need to get all fancy with chocolate chips in cupcakes at least--just put the chips in, stir and go. 

That however wasn't the only hitch in producing this batch of cupcakes. I am proud enough of the end product, but it really isn't the quality of work I am used to. I knew an "Iron Spiderman" theme would be tough, just because the color theme again was the dreaded red. But alas, THIS time I thought I was better prepared. I had bought some of the "new" (pricey) gel colors at my craft store last week, for whenever I next needed red. Who knew it would be so soon? 

The color kit included a blue and a green, and on the box they came in showed a beautiful true, deep red (blue and green) but what I got out of having to still use over half the bottle, was the same putrid milky dark pinkish red I always seem to get....AGAIN! (I do now have a plan for next time which is to buy the Americolor gels as I see many positive reviews about the strong true nature of THEIR colors, but for today, we're going to have to stick with pukey-barely-red because that's what I've got.) Fortunately the pictures I have seen of "Iron Spiderman" (see below) are kinda pukey milky red anyway, and he has a weird gold colored spider thing on his chest, so it's really all good.

At first I was just going to leave my red frosted cupcakes alone. They came out o.k. enough when I used my thick writing tip for cupcakes and swirled the red on top. Footnote: overnight the red color strangely did seem to deepen a little more. They struck the "pink" chord less with me this morning. 

But LAST NIGHT I wasn't satisfied with just plain semi-red frosting, so to try to bring out more of the red, I added a bunch of red sparkly sprinkles I had. (I used these on the Graduation Cap hat too--tasted good, but I wasn't that happy with how they came out on that cake either.) I WAS happy about how they looked on these cupcakes, but still wasn't satisfied with the amount of redness or the "too plain" design. 

I had an idea! I had a can of the spray food color paint in red, to lightly mist over the finished cupcakes, which I was SURE would bring out the actual redness, and it MIGHT have had it worked. I do hate these mist cans as almost every time one or more colors clogs. No matter how much hot water I put on the actual stem or the cap to "clean" it out, or toothpicks inserted just to make sure there wasn't anything stuck in there, they just still don't spray--this is true even when I have a brand new can. So, alas, back to the drawing board of "what to do to add something to the cupcakes" when the chocolate chips and the attempt at red wasn't quite enough.

So this is where the Iron Spiderman drawing comes in. I figured how hard could it be to duplicate that gold spider on each cupcake. I figured I could tint some frosting gold (how hard could it be to get "gold"?) and using my tiny writing tip, outline a spider and then flood fill it like I do my cookies. Well, let me tell you it wasn't as easy as I envisioned. 

  First of all, getting "gold" isn't that easy. I was assured that using golden yellow and a drop of leaf green would make me a nice antique gold. (I was thinking brown and yellow, but followed the tried and true instructions.) What did I get? More like neon green bug chartreuse. Yes, I didn't have "golden yellow" but something like "cornmeal or buttercup yellow" which should have been close enough, only that I think one drop of green was even too much.

Footnote: After rereading the Wilton Color Chart here's what it said: "ANTIQUE GOLD Add just an extremely small touch of Leaf Green to Golden Yellow." Yup. 

Yes, I think it did ultimately come together adequately, but if I had to do it again, I would definitely start with a golden yellow, maybe add the teeny touch of green but then another drop of brown. By now, I am out of frosting so we're going with my golden, slightly green bug color---after all, a spider IS a bug isn't it? 

Problem number 4 (or is this 5 or 6 by  now?). The drawing of the spider just wasn't working. The lines were too jiggly and I couldn't "fill" the outline like a cookie because the icing was just too thick. It wasn't "flowing". So by the time I was done I had what looked like little zig zagged bodies which  to me appeared more like a skeleton. Then with the greenish tint and the crazy legs, reminded me of the character "Frogger" in one of the oldest video games ever--where you push the lever and the "froggish" bug thing skips across the river onto rocks or sometimes the back of a swimming wolf or other thing it shouldn't trust, that eventually eats it.

 

The other drawback of tampering with my previously beautifully frosted the cupcakes (in a way that I originally was going to just use as is), is that each had a nice pointy finish in the center of each cupcake. This actually impeded my ability to create the spider body as the red tip stuck up through the gold part leaving it just a bit messier and more cluttered than I would have liked. As I moved on, I first pushed down the otherwise pretty point with my finger to give me a more flat surface on which to put the "spider" and that seemed to help but it was a little too late on some of the cupcakes.

The finishing touch was whether to add some spider eyes or not. I decided "yes." Eventually most came out o.k., but the first few where I used my gel cookie icing (very shiny and very thin) were a little too large so the eyes blended together as one "bar". If the cupcake wasn't creepy before, it was after the eye bar went on. It isn't the type of icing you can put in the fridge or freezer to harden and remove...it's gel. So, I put those first few "mistakes" aside and got better as I went along using just the ittiest bittiest dink of black, lifting the tip so slowly that the long thread it was leaving, actually fell back into the center of each eye and got through the project. 

They all went in my trusty transporter--all 24--and then into the fridge where they will remain until party time. I ended up "spidering out" about 16 of the 24 and leaving the rest just plain. I figured mixing a few of the plain ones in and among the spider ones, might actually make it look a little less crazy and more edible for the little kids who might in fact be very frightened of the ugly bugs that exist on my cupcakes.

 I do hope David and his buddies won't stare at these long...will look and go "ewww" and then sing Happy Birthday and take their bites and the cupcakes will be gone and THEY will be happy. 

Cake #20 - The Cupcake Cakes - Also known as Pullaparts - Graduation Cap and Olaf from "Frozen"

Cake # 20 - The Cupcake Cakes - Also known as Pullaparts

Some 5 or 6 years ago, Michael my husband finished his degree. To celebrate we bought at the local grocery store, a cute little pile of cupcakes that were all pushed together and frosted as one as if it were a sheet cake. The shape was that of a graduation hat. The frosting was very thick, and very solid and very very blue! So blue that the next morning the blue had travelled right through everyone...o.k. TMI, but for several reasons the cake was apparently quite memorable, especially to Meghan.

When her high school graduation rolled around last week, I was so tired that I was resolved to just "buy" a cake (gasp! I know) rather than try to make one admidst all that we had to do. There was prom, baccalaureate mass and awards ceremonies, end of the year finals craziness, baseball Allstars, birthdays and on and on so I contacted the grocery store where we bought it before, planning to just give in and get it there. But alas while they had some cute cake designs, none were quite what Meghan wanted. I really didn't want to just settle for "o.k." and contemplated how hard, really, it would be for me to try to tackle this teeny tiny project too.

So I looked around the internet and found a few ideas that I turned into the cupcake cake for Meg's graduation. Since her school colors (and the party theme) was red and gold, I decided to use those colors on the cake. The only thing is that red is not a good cake frosting color. Yes, the gel colors they make these days are far better than they used to be, but I didn't have any, and no matter how hard I try with the older food coloring, I can never ever get a true red out of anything. It always looks like a washed out, sorta red, or a dark reddish pink. So I focused on the "gold" which of course was at best a yellow but easier to read the writing on yellow.

One of the tricks to this cake (that I did better on Mary Ellen's Frozen cake the next day) was to make sure the frosting (my usual buttercream) was really thick and actually colder than usual. As I frosted this cake, I found that the meltier version of the buttercream which I made with heavily whipped whipping cream, actually started to seep down through the "holes" in between the cupcakes. Fortunately I was able to refill the growing depressions with more frosting and get it all in the fridge to solidify and saved it. In Mary Ellen's Frozen cake, I used only a small amount of milk and more powdered sugar and while the frosting was heavier, it worked better overall.

I wasn't that happy with the shape of the bottom part of the graduation cap. I have seen it sort of scalloped edged or straight, and went with the straight, but wasn't quite pleased. . It looks rather cartoonish to me but that's what I chose, and so it was!  I had a couple of extra cupcakes and figured I would add the school's initials and a "2015". 

The neat thing about these cakes is how easy it was to serve them. Basically the kids could just pull the cupcakes out one by one and we didn't need forks or plates or a cutting knife. :-)









The procedure for both cakes was basically the same.

I baked the white cake cupcakes in colored papers I had to match the theme. After they were cooled, I put them on the cake board with a dab of frosting on each bottom to hold it to the board--at least the outer edge ones, and put them in the shape I wanted and that fit the board. I made sure I really pushed them together tightly to avoid frosting seepage in the holes. I also tried to make sure before I baked them, when filling my cups, that they were all about the same height. A few times some cupcakes were too low in the middle and too high on the edges so I merely moved the high ones inside and the low ones onto the edge and that helped level it out.

I tinted my usual buttercream (although modified so it was denser than I usually make) and put it into my piping bag with the large cupcake frosting tip. I then went around all of the edges to make the first attempt at binding it together. 

I then put a very thick layer of frosting all over the cupcakes and eventually spread it with my cake knife until it was smooth. I used my shell tip on a smaller bag to create the shell scalloped edge.I then put the whole thing in the fridge to harden somewhat. This time nothing fell through the holes at all! :-) 

I used ready made vanilla frosting in a piping bag with the larger writing tip to create my outline of Olaf and then filled in the outline with the vanilla, spreading it with my small rubber spatula to get it smooth. I also cheated by using my Wilton aerosol can of "Ready to Decorate" Icing in black which I used for Olaf's buttons, eyes and mouth. At one point I made a boo boo, (since the icing comes out rather abruptly from the can) so I put the entire thing in the fridge again (would have done the freezer if I had room) until it hardened somewhat. I then removed the boo boo with a toothpick, very carefully, applied a little more white frosting over the remnant of the booboo and then did it again. It fixed it just fine.

I had some leftover red (aka reddish) frosting from the Graduation Cap cake and used it for the red/pinkish nose of Olaf, and then mixed in some brown gel color with the rest of it to make his woodsy colored arms at the end.

Finally, I had some candy snowflakes that Kathleen gave me that came in her "party kit" that I added to the top near Olaf's head to make it look like snow. I also put a few on the extra cupcakes I had.

I tucked the extra cupcakes around it (though I actually liked the look of the cake without the cupcakes--seemed to make it look cluttered.) I didn't think this cake was suited for writing on, so I didn't put "Happy Birthday Mary Ellen." I hope she didn't notice.! :-)