The difficult part was the figurine. I actually started this first as I knew it would take me a while to figure out. I started with the head - you can see my attempts in the background of this photo. My first attempt was the one at the back on the left-hand-side. It was made by following directions from a book, which suggested that you start with the round head, then make indentations for the eyes and add bits of fondant for the nose and mouth. Then a very thin layer of fondant is added on top to create a type of skin. This was really time consuming, and although it was slightly more realistic than the final version, it also looked like it belonged to a horror movie.
My second attempt (at the back on the right-hand-side) just looked wrong and like she had put on her make-up in the dark. The third attempt was better - basically I forgot the directions from the book and just treated the fondant like it was playdough (yes, I work with kids for a living).
This is how I made the figurine (although I am sure that there are much quicker ways!)
Just remember:
*Don't use wooden skewers or toothpicks if the cake is for kids!! (you can use raw dried spaghetti instead).
*Add tylose powder to the fondant as you go along so that it sets harder.
*To get this skin colour, I used ivory gel paste, with a little pink added in.
The head:
*Shape the round head from fondant.
*Secure the head onto a toothpick or piece of raw dried spaghetti which has been coated in sugar glue and let it dry so that the head doesn't swivel (unless you are after the horror movie look)
*Make indentations for the eye sockets (I used a frilling tool). Add white and black fondant to make the eyes.
*Roll a small amount of fondant for the nose and stick on with sugar glue
*Make the indentation for the mouth (I used the rim from a lid to get the shape)
*Once it has set, draw on the eyebrows and lipstick with food-safe pens. Add blush with petal dust or equivalent food-safe colour.
*Leave to dry over-night.
The body:
*I essentially just moulded a lump of fondant into the shape that I wanted (helpful, I know!)
*Secure the body with a skewer (or raw spaghetti) which has been coated in sugar glue so that it can be stuck into the cake once the figurine is complete.
*Once the body has dried, cut a rectangle of black fondant to make the dress and stick on with sugar glue. (The dress ended up much more low-cut than I had anticipated, but, as it turned out, the birthday boy didn't mind!)
The hair:
*I tried this a couple of ways, but then ended up cutting thin strips of fondant and adding them piece by piece. It needed a few layers to get the volume that I was after.
The arms:
*This was the difficult bit - I'm sure that there is a much easier way of doing this, but I shaped the arms out of fondant, inserted wire into the ends and let them dry, resting on tissues to get the right angle. I made quite a few back-up arms as I thought that they would break (which they did). My husband thought that it looked like there had been a massacre :) The wire then gets inserted into the body
The hands:
*Shape the end of the arm into a teardrop, then flatten a bit. *Make a cut for a thumb on one side and pull it down a little. *Make three cuts along the top for the fingers.
*Twist each finger to lengthen.
*Press gently in the centre to make a palm and then shape downwards towards the wrist.
Does any of this make sense? I hope it's of some help to someone. Confused? If yes, then just have a go and you'll figure it out :) Make sure that you leave yourself a lot of time to get it right and have fun!
-N-
*This was the difficult bit - I'm sure that there is a much easier way of doing this, but I shaped the arms out of fondant, inserted wire into the ends and let them dry, resting on tissues to get the right angle. I made quite a few back-up arms as I thought that they would break (which they did). My husband thought that it looked like there had been a massacre :) The wire then gets inserted into the body
This cake was a lot of fun to make - it was a cake of many firsts for me! My first wedding cake, first time to make a hill out of cake, first time to make a cobblestone path, first time to make wrought iron fencing, first time to use a rice bubbles and marshmallow mix to make walls.. even the first time that I made black royal icing! I found many tips along the way that I will share in my next posts.
So I finally learned how to swirl buttercream icing. Lots of people told me it was easy (you might have been one of them). They told me that it was all about using a big tip (and I tried a lot of different tips). And that you just needed to swirl it (not very helpful advice, by the way). But it just didn't work out for me. Until I found this post and this post which actually made sense and I found really easy to follow. Which means that my cupcakes now look like this (just in time for M's baby shower - these ones are chocolate mudcake with vanilla buttercream).
So.. it actually is easy (once someone explained it) and I found Wilton's 1M tip (open star) worked for me. The main difference between these swirls and ones I have done before is that you start in the centre, holding the piping bag at a 90 degree angle (or close to it), and pipe a star in the middle. 
Next, without releasing pressure, pipe another circle on top, moving toward the middle of the cupcake. Then pipe a third circle and finish in the centre of the cupcake.
My 13 year old niece has been asking me for ages to show her how to decorate cupcakes. She came and stayed at our place for a sleep-over, and despite being REALLY tired from swimming lessons, she made some great cupcakes. We had fun using plunger cutters to make butterflies, silicone moulds for starfish, texture mats (what a great invention) and lots of confetti sprinkles. Here's to many more afternoons of cake decorating together :)
