Guest post: French Cupcakes for French for Cupcake!

Hello there! My name is Katie from the blog Katiecakes and I'm here guest blogging for the lovely Claire while she's off having the time of her life in Japan! So jealous! As I'm here on French for Cupcake this fine day, I thought I'd create some French style cupcakes for you along with some basic instructions on how to whip them up yourselves. So here we go!

First of all you'll need some basic equipment at your disposal including a rolling pin, cling film for rolling your fondant, a clean paint brush, luster dust in gold and pink (available from all cake decorating stores), a sharp knife (careful now), fondant in white, blue and pink, a beautiful cameo mould (I got mine from Designacake.com) and of course, your blank cupcakes.

Next you want to roll out your fondant in your chosen colours, don't forget to roll between two sheets of cling film, saves a hell of a lot of cleaning up. Once rolled cut out circles using a pastry cutter large enough to cover your cakes (a wine glass is usually the perfect size). Pipe splodges of frosting atop each cake before covering with the fondant circle, taking care not to be too rough. Gently ladies, gently.

Once you've topped all of your cupcake the fun can commence.

For the cameo cake you first need to make the center of your cameo. Take a walnut sized piece of white fondant, dip it in icing sugar and press it into the cavity in your cameo mould. Taking a sharp knife, trim off the excess fondant leaving your cameo snug inside the mould. Turn the mould up side down and allow the sugared cameo to plop out. Next roll out a piece of white fondant just larger than your cameo center and paint it gold using your paintbrush and golden luster dust. Pop your cameo in the middle of the painted fondant and trim away any excess, leaving a .5cm border. And there you have your cameo, affix to your cupcake and admire your handywork.

For the striped cake all you need is to roll a super long, thin sausage of white fondant. Cut eight equal lengths from your sausage and paint each string gold. Affix the sausages to your cupcake in a symmetrical pattern. Next roll a pea sized ball of white fondant in your hands and squish it to form a disk, paint gold and place on the center of your cupcake to hide the sausage joins. Using the same method, make a fondant cone, paint gold and affix to the disk. There you go!

Now you've got the hand of it just let your creativity flow, you could make a dotty cake, or a cake topped with a bow. The world is your oyster!

Have fun and I'm sure both Claire and myself would adore to see your efforts!

Katie xoxo