Future Teacher Cupcakes

These were fun. A friend of mine is a Professor at IWU here in Bloomington. She wanted to treat her students to something fun and asked me to make cupcakes that were in a Teacher Theme. And I didn't realize she had a favorite cupcake so it was fun to learn......the Wannabe is her favorite. I like making that cake too.

All that said - these pictures are just awful - again this was holiday season and I was a bit stretched for brain use......so I took 1 picture of each not thinking or bothering to take more as "just in case" pics.

In real life though - they were very colorful and super cute. I made a variation of 4 - an Apple for the Teacher - a Graded A+ Paper - a Chalkboard - and finally an Alphabet Book. They were each fun and pretty easy to make (if you are thinking of trying it)

Although this looks like a pretty straight forward order there were 2 new elements I added into this. I started using an Edible Ink Pen - they are SOOOOOOOOOO cool!! You just Write on the Fondant with them!! Who Knew right?? Okay so a lot of people know.......but it was way easier to make the lines on the little sheets of paper with the Edible Pen then it was to do with icing tint and a paintbrush!!

The second new element was baking Gluten Free. I thought that would be more of a challenge, but if you follow the guidelines it was much easier then originally thought. Like nut free stuff you clean every surface (or I do) - then you make certain to bake the Gluten Free items first so that there is no Gluten in the air from the regular flour. Or the other option is to bake the Gluten Free about 24 hours after the regular flour ones. I went with the first option so that the cupcakes all baked the same day. They were really surprisingly tasty too. Slight texture difference as the Gluten Free flour I used (King Arthur's) was a mix of Tapioca, Potato and Rice flours. However, they were a deeper chocolate and pretty tasty.

So these cupcakes were Wannabes - Regular and Gluten Free - with a Cream Cheese Marshmallow center - Chocolate Ganache icing - Vanilla buttercream fondant decorations. Very tasty!!