Gloverly Cupcakes

Last year a friend at work asked if I’d be able to make a birthday cake for one of her friends. However when she said she wanted a sugar skull on it, I had no idea what she was on about and was worried that if agreed to make something I wouldn’t be able to do! However it turned out that sugar skulls are pretty cool! It also gave me the opportunity to do some painting on icing, which I haven’t done much of before. I decided to draw/paint the skull on a piece of sugar florist paste and stick it onto the cake at the end, rather than painting it directly onto the cake which would have meant waiting until the cake had been baked, cooled and iced. By doing it on sugar florist paste I was able to cut the skull shape out using scissors and then leave it to dry before painting on it. I decided to use some of the details painted on the skull – the flowers and leaves – to make some decorations to go round the bottom of the cake. And rather than using ribbon round the base of the cake I used black icing and strip cutter to make one.
It’s not the kind of cake that I’d have ever chosen to make myself, for a start I didn’t even know what a sugar skull was, but I loved the finished cake!