CrankyCakes

Inspired by this year’s Penguin Plunge and by this,  I’ve been back at that drawing board working on making some rockin’ penguin cupcakes.  I tried one batch, but wasn’t wowed by my results.  I revisited my original inspiration, and decided to try my hand with fondant-as-playdough for two reasons:

• It can be sculpted into nearly any shape as easily as any clay
• Not allergenic like marzipan (a.k.a. “the other edible clay”).

So I called up Mirabelle’s, and they kindly agreed to sell me a three cups of fondant.  It’s available at evil chain stores, but I assumed it would be better from Burlington’s pre-eminent patisserie.  Along with the fondant, I gathered:

• Icing gel (it’s thick and doesn’t change the texture of the icing/fondant too much) in black plus primary colors.
• White edible sprinkles (snow for the penguins to lounge and frolic on).
• Double batch of cupcakes so I could make the penguins, and also a dozen for Math Night at school (there’s a link to a great Abby Dodge recipe below).
• One half-batch of Swiss Meringue Buttercream.
• Cupcake liners in primary colors.
• Didn’t have but should have: thin exam-type gloves to use while dealing with the food color.

After dividing the fondant into several parts, I got out the gel icing coloring and started kneading in the color.  Don’t do this without gloves.

The black was very strange, as the red-purple part of the pigment seemed to head right into my skin, leaving the fondant itself distinctly green.  So, with CrankyGreg’s advice, I kneaded in more red, and some blue, and it finally turned a nice bright black.  It also made it goopier and harder to work with, but kneading in a little bit of confectioner’s sugar mostly took care of that.

For penguin purposes, I wanted black, red, yellow and blue, and left quite a bit white.  Then amidst several rounds of muttering and scrubbing,  the colored fondant went in the refrigerator so it could chill down (separated, so the colors wouldn’t bleed together) while I made a batch of Abby Dodge’s Emergency Blender Cupcakes.

Then it was time to take out the black and white sections and start making penguin parts.

Eyes.  These are much smaller than they look in the picture.

Heads and bodies.

And then put the parts together to make the penguins into themselves:

• A black ball (head) onto a white oval (body), and then rolling and smushing black dough into a sort of winged cape.
• Tiny white balls with tinier black balls for the eyes.  These were the hardest part, though would have been easier if I had had the sense to keep returning the dough to the refrigerator.  The black pupils were made by rolling an extremely thin sausage and then slicing off the smallest bit with a sharp paring knife.  Much grumbling took place.
• Orange triangle for beak.
• A nice fat orange “v” for feet.
• Various shapes for penguin accessories, which I did as I went along.  Towels, fish, swimsuits, beach balls, maybe a soda with a straw, whatever you like.
• They can be posed on their stomachs, backs, sitting, standing, doing the backstroke, diving.  Penguins deserve to have fun and variety too.

Then I frosted the cupcakes, dusted them with the edible glitter, and put a little pal on top.

The flock has been delivered to Special Olympics for their event on Saturday.  I don’t know how they’re going to use them, but I hope they find their way into some happy bellies.

And then it was a separate batch for Math Night at E.’s school by rolling out colored and black fondant into thin sausages and shaping it into numbers and mathematical symbols.

And now it’s on to planning some kooky something for the co-occurring Valentine’s Day & Chinese New Year to celebrate Year of the Tiger.  Something with hearts, maybe stripes that’s fun for the kids, plus something traditional, Chinese and delicious for the grown-ups.  Stay tuned.

With Special Olympics VT’s Penguin Plunge on the way, I was thinking penguin thoughts. Well, I was thinking something like, “What a great event. I should just take that February plunge into Lake Champlain! I just turned 40! What a great opportunity to do something bold! Hmm. I wonder if they’d like a batch of cupcakes instead. That would probably be even more helpful.”

So I did some research to see what penguin cupcakes folks have made, like this and this.  I didn’t want to just mold penguins out of marzipan or fondant or whatever, and I didn’t want to buy mini donuts and donut holes, so I thought I’d try something else.  And then my friend announced a bake sale to raise money for the Humane Society at our church, so I had a reason to rehearse.

Using the always-reliable Abby Dodge’s Emergency Blender Cupcakes, I made a double batch, baking half in mini tins, and half in regular sized cups lined with foil  (don’t line the minis).

This is how we patiently waited for them to bake.

While they cooked and cooled, I prepared some penguin-decorating candy, starting with eyes made from little white ones with dots of black icing.  I had pulled out some yellow ones too, prompting CrankyGreg to say, “Excellent.  Penguins with jaundice.”

I got some chocolate-covered mint cookies for wings.  These were trickier to cut without crushing than I would have thought, but the scraper ended up doing the job right.

Not pictured here:

• Batch of chocolate icing for dipping.
• Orange-colored fruit leather cut into triangles.
• The marshmallows I should have gotten to slice for penguin tummies.

Once the cupcakes were cool, I used a little bit of frosting to stick a mini cupcake on top of a larger one.  Then I used a spoon to cover them with icing.  We attached eyes, wings, beak and feet.  And then I realized I had forgotten something white (like those marshmallow slices) for the bellies, so I clumsily spooned some confectioner’s sugar on.  Then we stood back to gaze upon the results, which were decidedly ducklike.

The rest of the batch were improved by making a double stack of the minis on top so that our penguins had necks.

Though there was a lot of self-mockery going on around here, E. & Z. loved them.  And when they proudly delivered the remaining ones to the bake sale table Sunday morning, we were swarmed and gasped at and feeling pretty good for the few minutes that they lasted.    Plus I think we know enough now to make a truly beautiful batch for the February 6 event.  Maybe we’ll see you there.