Baked by Rach: Pirate Cupcakes

'Raaaacccchh' I heard my sister say one evening last week. I waited patiently to find out what she was going to ask me for. Turns out she'd had a great idea for an end of year gift for all of the children in her reception class. They have been learning all about pirates so Alice thought that a fitting end of year gift would be for each of them to have a themed cupcake, wrapped in cellophane with a little personal message on a tag. The only problem she has was that she cannot bake at all (that's not me being cruel - she would say the same about herself). Hence the 'Raaaaaaccccchhh'!

After a quick browse on Pinterest and a chat on twitter with some fellow bakers I had a rough idea in my head - now it was all in the baking. I've never really used fondant icing before apart from with with shop brought cutters so this was going to test my artistic skills as I'd have to model the fondant to get the look I was after. Whilst I can be creative - execution is not my strong suit so this was a real test. Thankfully they turned out ok - I just hoped that the kiddies like them! Since writing this they have been given them and they got a big thumbs up!

Right then - lets get baking!

I actually started by making the pirate faces the night before baking the cakes as I was baking after work so if I hadn't spread it over a few days I'd have been baking way into the night! I don't have any fancy icing tools apart from I did buy one of these which I used for shaping the ear lopes and eyes. You'll also need a fine paint brush for adding the eye detail and moustaches. I was inventive with the things that I already had in by baking box, such as using an oval biscuit cutter for the the mouth and using a circle cutter to get the basic bandana shape before cutting it down to size.

To make the pirate faces you will need:

Fondant icing in various colours - white / skin colour / red
Black food colouring - for painting pupils and beards
Confetti sprinkles
Various cutters

I used my standard sponge recipe which you can see in more detail here...

To make 35 cupcakes I used 7 large eggs. The quantities for this mix are fairly simple so you can reduce or increase the recipe for whatever you need. Each egg needs 2 ounces or 50g of butter, caster sugar and self raising flour. Flavour your cake mix however you wish - I used vanilla.

Use the creaming method to make your mix - this means mixing the butter and sugar together until pale; adding the eggs a little at a time and then folding in the flour, it's as easy as that.

Put a spoonful of mixture into your chosen cupcake cases - I used stripy baking cups from Iced Jems which helped with the pirate theme giving a look of stripy t-shirts. Bake your cakes for around 18 minutes at 180c, until golden brown and springy to the touch.

Whilst the cakes are cooling bake a batch of butter cream - I used 1 part butter to two parts icing sugar for my butter cream and add a glug or two of milk to loosen it up. For 35 cupcakes I used 375g butter and approximately 750g of icing sugar. When making butter cream I'm a bit hap-hazzard with measurements and tend to judge it by taste. I flavoured my buttercream with a dash of vanilla. You can experiment with flavours but I wanted to keep these fairly simple.

When your cakes are cool pipe or spoon a generous amount of butter cream onto the centre of each cake. The piping does't need to be fancy as it will be covered with a pirate face so won't be seen.

Once each cake has been piped this is when I added the pirate faces on top, then wrapped them in cellophane and added some curly ribbon and a special 'Baked by Rach' tag as a finishing touch.

The face was made out of the following:

1 round skin coloured disk (approx. 5mm in thickness)
3 small skin colours falls. 1 for the nose, 2 flattened with a dip pressed in one end to make the ears
2 small white balls for the eyes with pupils painted in black
1 semi circle in red for the bandana (approx. 5mm in thickness) decorated with sugar confetti
2 x small red triangles to make the bandana ties
Finish by adding a smile and a pirate moustache

I was quite please with myself for this bake - whilst they weren't all uniform, it was a good first attempt for using fondant and I hope to challenge myself soon with another fondant bake.

Let me know how you get on - of course your cupcakes don't have to be pirate themed, you could experiment with flavours and add a fondant topper suitable for any occasion. Places like Pinterest are great for getting inspiration.