Gloverly Cupcakes

I’ve had a short break from making cakes since Christmas – partly because I haven’t had any to make (not that that usually stops me!) and partly because I’ve been busy at work so haven’t had much time. Luckily though, to end the cake drought, I got a message from Una asking if I could make her Harry Potter themed cake.Initially Una asked for a white owl, but given I was making it mid-week I had to say no. It was a really cool cake and I’d have loved to have made it but trying to fit it in after work just wouldn’t have given me the time to do it properly. In the past I would have said yes, stayed up late trying to get it done, and then been annoyed that the end result wasn’t as good as I wanted… but I’ve learnt from my mistakes! In the end we agreed on a round cake with some decorations – I sent Una a photo of one I’d found to check it was ok. I’m not usually a fan of copying a cake completely (unless it’s perfect to start with/I can’t think of a way to improve it), so I ended up making quite a few changes and the finished cake looked nothing like the photo I’d sent Una, but the general idea was the same!The decorations were all fairly straightforward to make:

• The snitch was a ball of icing which I made some markings on with a blunt knife and then dusted with edible gold dust. I made the wings by rolling out some white sugar florist paste with a piece of wire down one side. I then cut them to shape and used some sharp scissors to cut up from the bottom to the wire to create lots of lines.
• The wand was brown icing shaped into a wand! I made some markings using a blunt knife to give the end of the wand texture and look more wood-like
• The glasses were made from black sugar florist paste. I rolled it out to about 5mm thick and then cut out 2 circles the same size and using a smaller circle cutter I cut a circle out from the middle to leave 2 rings. I used a thin strip cutter to make the arms and the nose-piece, shaped them and left them to dry. Once they’d hardened I stuck them all together using edible glue and held them in position with various items while they dried.
• The map was a thin piece of white sugar florist paste, rolled out to the thickness of paper and then folded to look like the map. I roughed up the edges and folded the corners over a bit before leaving it to dry. I painted on the writing and footprints and then dusted with cream/brown/yellow petal dust to give it an aged look.

I had a dilemma about the cake colour. The photo I’d looked at had a cake that was aged like the map, but colouring the cake in that way meant the map wouldn’t stand out. In the end I went with white since the decorations had looked quite good on my white cake dummy!