Baby Shower

I really love when people ask me to make something that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. It just ensures that I try new things and branch out. Otherwise I would just sit here piping pretty flowers and decorating cakes with swirl designs. (Okay, probably not that bad.) This shower was for a baby boy, so the family decided to go with a sports theme!

These were red velvet with a frosting using cream cheese emulsion. It still tasted like cream cheese, but I didn't have to worry about other ingredients throwing off my consistency. This was a great way to get the flavor without doing that. I made a marshmallow fondant and piped on the stitches by hand. It was super time consuming! 

As you can probably tell, I did 8 cupcakes with red frosting, 8 cupcakes with white, and then 8 baseballs.

These were pumpkin cupcakes with more of the cream cheese emulsion frosting. More marshmallow fondant. I used the wilton coloring Copper to get that orange-but-not-overly-orange color. After consulting the internet, I determined that the best way to get the texture I wanted would be to use a very small circular decorating tip (nooo idea which one.) And then by hand slightly push into the fondant. The texture was perfect! It was also time consuming! But they came out perfectly! I just piped on the black lines by hand. 

My only concern with these was that the frosting and the basketballs would be two very-off shades of copper, but I think they turned out okay.

Chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow filling. I actually bought (::gasp::) chocolate fondant, but I had never made it before, and as fondant is still a little tricksy I decided not to try adding cocoa into the mix. I had my boyfriend, Greg, help me with the football shape. I came up with a little template for myself and then used a sharp knife to get the shapes. I just piped on the stitching. 

Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate mousse filling. The soccer balls were actually the ones I had been most worried about prior to starting this project, and turned out to be the easiest. I got the Wilton FoodWriter markers and just drew on the black patches.

My other concern was that with the other cupcakes I did matching colors for the frosting. However... with soccer, it's really black and white. I don't like using all black frosting, but the half&half was a great compromise!

All in all a great project and I was really happy with the results. So was the mom-to-be, and she was what mattered!