My giant cupcakes are starting to become popular! This is my fourth now, and my second “ordered” one. I got an email earlier in the week asking for one completely chocolate (case, cake and icing), and the theme was a Mad Hatter tea, so I decided to make a hat for the top as well!
The hat is made from fondant! I went on a hunt to find some pre coloured green, but the places I went to were unfortunately out of stock. I decided I’d paint it instead, as it would end up holding the same amount of green colour as if I mixed it in (and made a horrible mess).
You can paint fondant by:
1) With powdered colour, mix a tiny bit with a tiny bit of vodka. The reason vodka is used as it isn’t sticky like water on it’s own, and the alcohol evaporates as it dries.
2) With Wilton gel colour, do the same, but you only need the tiniest bit of vodka. If you paint it too thickly, it will be sticky afterwards – I put too much on the top of the hat, but the sides and brim were fine – I didn’t put as much on them.
3) I would say that you shouldn’t paint it with water based colours, as I have read it actually starts to melt the fondant.. Fondant doesn’t really like water.
The ribbon around the hat is pre-coloured black fondant, and the price tag is just plain white with the numbers written on.
For a final touch I decided to cut out her name in white fondant letters and put them around the top as a contrast!
Onto the cupcake…
The chocolate case is just that – nothing special this time, just a large block of dark cooking chocolate melted in two stages. I’ve gotten really good at doing them now, managed to get it up high enough for the top of the cupcake to sit on it and not have any gaps around the sides!
As previously, the cake is the miracle chocolate cake recipe I have, and the icing is regular buttercream with dutch processed cocoa – it is not as sweet as regular cocoa, but gives a darker chocolate colour. The bottom and top layers of the cake are stuck together with some of the icing as well.
And there you have it 
I think they were really happy with this when I delivered it, and it looked like they were having a great time too!
