Gloverly Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago it was my niece Alice’s Christening and I was very excited to be making the cake for her. I’m not managing to fit much baking or cake decorating in at the moment so it was really nice to have a small cake project to work on! Tams asked for something with butterflies, so we looked at loads of designs and decided on the additions of some painted grass and flowers in pinks and purples and a small grey bunny too. Click

I started by colouring 3 bits of florist sugar paste in dark pink, dark purple and a dark pink/purple. I then used these 3 colours and added some white to make 3 paler tones and then added more white to make 3 even paler tones of the same colours. I then used these to make various sized butterflies and flowers. The butterflies were set to dry on some folded paper to hold their wings in place at an angle.

I then made the little grey bunny with some grey sugar paste. The ears had a small bit of florists wire inserted into them to hold them in place and the bunny had a cocktail stick through the middle to ensure his head stayed in place. Matthew (Alice’s big brother) and Emily both have grey Jelly Cat bunnies that are called Keith, so it was a fun personal addition to the cake.

Once the cake was iced and stacked I got to work doing the painting. I mixed up various green colours using mint green and spruce green Sugarflair colouring paste and added some white powder to some of it too. It was really therapeutic painting it! Once it was done I used royal icing to stick all the flower and butterflies in place.

We had a wonderful time at the Christening and the cake certainly went down well! And plenty of people recognised the little Keith bunny too!