Pink and Green Cupcakes

We're headed to a diaper shower this evening and I made cupcakes to take with us. They are using the Penelope bedding from Pottery Barn Kids and it is so adorable! Pink, green, birds... need I say more?! I wanted to do some kind of decoration that followed along that theme but I was running out of time, so I decided to pipe white chocolate P's and add them to the cupcakes.

I didn't get any pictures of the piping from last night and I have to say, I ran into a few minor problems and that coupled with not enough chocolate, means I got 12 good P's. I started by melting the white chocolate and then dividing it in 1/2. If you plan to do a lot of this, I'd suggest mixing your color in but only using about 1/4-1/2 of your chocolate at a time - it dries quickly - and reheating as you go. You can't reheat in your piping bag if your tip is metal. You can only color white chocolate and almond bark with oil colors or powdered color, so make sure you prepare for this ahead of time. I purchased my colors from AGS here in San Antonio. The tiniest drop goes a long way, so start off extremely conservatively.

To make the P's I placed the chocolate in a piping bag with a #2 tip (would have preferred smaller but didn't have one). Beforehand, print out a template (or draw) the thing you'd like to create. In my case, I printed 8 P's, in the font of my choice, on a sheet of paper then placed a sheet of wax paper on top and went to town.

You will want a design that meets up at several points to strengthen the chocolate. I had several break... several.

The lady at AGS told me that my disco dust would stick after the chocolate dried - WRONG!!! I was panicked!! It did not stick. I used my finger to gently massage the letter with water, then brushed the disco dust on and that worked, but I wonder how much better they would look had I done it while it was wet...??

I made the cupcakes this morning in white liners and after they cooled, I made buttercream icing. Using a 2A Wilton tip (although a 1A would have been better) I applied the icing. To get this look, start in the center of the cupcake and gently push icing out of the tip in a small mound, keeping the tip submerged in icing. Then, gently drag the tip, still in the icing, around the cupcake. Leaving the tip in the icing gives the more seamless look. When you come to the end, slightly pull the tip to the side, still in the icing, to basically "tuck" the icing into itself. Pull gently downward to prevent a peak, but it happens!