With a cherry on top!

An ice-cream sundae:

Originally consisting of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry on top, it's evolved into something quite fascinating (and potentially a bit sickly), unlimited to the size and amount of, well, everything you choose to add to it. From nuts to sprinkles to all the flavoured toppings you can reach in the line up at Sizzler.

A cupcake sundae: Originated somewhere on the internet (well, probably in someone's kitchen or bakery before that), which has become a wide-spread phenomenon where the design of a cupcake directly imitates the form of an ice-cream sundae.

I was asked to make some cupcakes for a friend to take to school for her daughter's birthday today. There was no theme she had in mind, just 'chocolate' for the flavour. Baffled with ideas, I eventually chose a design I have wanted to try and make for ages... The cupcake sundae.

I gathered the ingredients needed, made the cupcakes, and began assembling these miniature desserts. I had made (well, attempted to make) the wafers the night before, using caramel coloured fondant and the only patterned rolling pin I owned.

With white buttercream icing (using a technique I'd heard of on this lovely thing called the internet - adding a drop of 'violet' to the buttercream mixture to make it whiten), and piped a round swirl onto the cupcakes. Next was a drizzle of melted chocolate, some 100s & 1000s sprinkled on that, and a jaffa on top. Personally I think orange and chocolate is the worst possible combination ever imagined, but some people really dig it.

I quickly learned that unless your fondant 'wafer' has set extremely hard (which mine had not), it will flop and break not long after adding it to the cupcakes. So, soon after this photo was taken, I rearranged the order of my cupcake production line, and started placing each cupcake into it's cellophane bag immediately after putting the 'wafer' in.

The line then continued from wafer to cupcake; cupcake to cellophane bags; then cellophane bag to the table, where they waited patiently until the next step...

They did look a bit special in their bags, though. 

The last job on the list of things to repeat a thousand times, was tying the cellophane bags up with ribbon (and curling them, because I still had time before they were picked up).

I've since discovered that they are just as delicious as an ice-cream sundae ;)

Happy birthday Mia!