Giant Princess Cupcake

You may remember this from my previous post about the Ladies Night stall I appeared at in March! I had a lot of comments from people thinking the cupcake wasn’t real, so here’s the full explanation of how it came together.

The giant cupcake itself is a chocolate cake recipe (another recipe from my Step-Mum, see Jelly Slice for the first one!) called ‘Miracle Chocolate Cake’. It was the first thing out of my recipe book that I made, and it really lives up to its name too! It is a moist chocolatey cake with the best texture and it holds its shape which is perfect for the giant cupcake.

Except this time I had a problem; I got the cake out of the pan WAY too early and it fell apart.

Luckily I was able to fix everything as the top half had only split in one place so I could disguise it with icing, and the bottom would all fit into the chocolate casing anyway.

Oh yes, the casing.

The chocolate case is made by melting chocolate and spreading it on the inside of the bottom part of the giant cupcake tin in two or three layers. I used one bag of Wilton’s Candy Melts to do it. Melt approximately half and pour into the cupcake tin, spreading it halfway up the sides and across the bottom. Don’t worry if it’s too thin, the second part will take care of the rest!

Pop it in the fridge for an hour or so – it needs to have completely set before you can do the next part. Don’t rush this.

Once it’s set hard, Melt the remaining Candy Melts and make sure you get all up the sides so it’s thick enough to support the top of the giant cupcake. Pop it in the fridge for an hour or two, until it’s set again. Leave it for as long as possible. It’s not going to completely melt when it is out but if the cake isn’t going in it for a little while, leave it in the fridge until it is.

Depending on how thick you make the casing, you may need to trim around the sides of the bottom half of your cupcake. Luckily, this was mainly a display unit and my bottom half had fallen apart after baking, so the cake bits filled up the bottom while the top sat on the edges of the chocolate case.

The icing is the easy part – I used a Wilton 1M tip and a giant piping bag to finish it, and it is still not as neat as I would have liked. I made it quite thick, as I substituted some of the butter in my buttercream for copha (vegetable shortening) instead. I needed the icing to set and not melt, and 100% butter can cause issues in warm temperatures. It wasn’t a *hot* day, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Of course, this was a display model too.

You can do that in regular recipes if you don’t think the frosting will hold out, substitute 1/4 or 1/3 of the butter in your buttercream for Copha and see the difference in the stability of your frosting!

This frosting is a regular buttercream recipe, it is almost white thanks to Wilton’s White White Icing Color.

The flowers are sugar flowers from the supermarket I have had since forever! I thought it was a good time to use them, so it looks like a fairy / princess giant cupcake.

And that’s it! This took a lot of work! If I wasn’t already baking 100 cupcakes the icing would look so much neater, but I am proud of my work anyway. I know the next one is going to be even more awesome!

We also figured out that there’s a huge problem with transporting these – I have 6 inch cake boxes but the lid doesn’t close (obviously) and depending on the icing thickness the sides can be damaged by the box! I’ll figure something out one day soon, but to get it to and from the Ladies Night this was in a large round ceramic dish with non slip material so it didn’t move in my car.

EDIT: If you’re looking for a recipe for the giant cupcake, you can use a simple pound cake recipe. Sponge is too light for something like this, you want something dense that will hold its shape when you put the top part on. A pound cake recipe is essentially a pound of everything (flour, butter, eggs, sugar). To make more cake, just increase the ratio. One cup, one kilo, ten kilos. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_cake