Magic cupcakes!

Last week at church, we had a real magician! He was fantastic, engaging, and captured our hearts and eyes with amazing tricks and a gospel message. I volunteered to provide dessert for the day, and here is the story behind it...

Without having any real idea for what to do for 100 somehow-Magic-related cupcakes for Magic Sunday, I went cake shop shopping... With the colour purple in mind, I found blue patty cases with yellow stars on them (not exactly purple, but pretty close). That could work - I could make wizard hats! Hmm... Perhaps I should make something simple enough to replicate so many times, though...

I left with the blue and yellow patty cases, a product called 'Solite' (which is apparently tasteless and when used in buttercream icing, makes icing white rather than pale yellow); and some yellow and blue sanding sugar to match the patty cases...

Time to get creative! I had made the cupcakes a couple of days prior, and froze them so they stayed fresh. I took them out the morning of Magic Sunday, ready to ice and decorate!

I hadn't used 'Solite' before, but following the instructions the cake shop gave me, i measured what I needed and started mixing. 200g Solite, and 200g margarine.

1.5kg of icing sugar later, and the icing was ready! Time was running low now, though... In my head, I had thought of making 4 different icing varieties - white, chocolate, blue, and yellow. No time for that now! I rearranged my thoughts to using just white icing on all the cupcakes, and then I would sprinkle the sanding sugar on top, half with blue and half with yellow... Excellent :)

I had lots of chocolate melts that didn't end up being used for the magic wafer wands, so thought of things that could be used with that... Stars! I printed out a page of star outlines, and covered it with baking paper. I found a brilliant idea of microwaving chocolate in snap lock bags from this website. I had never thought of that! I'd  always thought to melt the chocolate first, then pour it into a piping bag. This was so much easier! I snipped the corner once it was melted, and started piping the chocolate onto the baking paper, 'tracing' the stars that were underneath:

I piped the icing onto the cupcakes (half were vanilla and half were chocolate), and sprinkled the sanding sugar over them all. Once that was done, I placed a chocolate star on top of each :)

And these were my magic-themed cupcakes for Magic Sunday :)