Sunday, February 6, 2011

Super Bowl XLV: Tailgate Cupcakes

I love the Super Bowl; it's football, crazy commercials, and awesome food. And it's not like those of you who know me don't know I'm a Steelers fan. So the fact the my boys are going for the seventh (yes, I did say seven...as in the most Super Bowl wins EVER) makes me that much more excited for the Big Game. In celebration, I made cupcakes to support the boys in black and gold.
Time for a brief history lesson: The Steelers logo is based on the Steelmark (which is used to promote the iron/steel industry) which was originally designed by U.S. Steel. It's actually all quite fascinating, but that's the end of the history lesson. Now on to cupcakes. You can use pretty much any cupcake/frosting combo you like. I used a chocolate cinnamon cupcake with cinnamon scented chocolate buttercream. The toppers are the impressive/slightly,but not really difficult part. I am a new blogger and new to choclate/fondant work so there are no pictures of the process, but here's what you need to do:
1. Make a batch of modeling chocolate. To do this a combined 10oz of melted white chocolate and 1/3cup of light corn syrup. I mixed them until well combined and let the mixture cool on the counter-top (but if it was summer I probably would've had to stick that sucker in the fridge.)
2. Once the chocolate was cool, I rolled it out using a pasta roller. You can roll it out by hand, but you need to roll it pretty thin and this stuff is SUPER sticky so use wax paper or spray you counter really well with non stick spray.
3. Once the chocolate is rolled out cut it using a circle cookie cutter. I actually used a doughnut cutter with the center circle removed. My circles ended up being about two and a half inches in diameter. I actually wouldn't recommend going any smaller unless you're pretty experienced with fondant and chocolate.
4. Let the circles cool in the fridge while you prep your fondant. I will tell y'all fondant was not my first choice. My original plan was to pain the design on with colored chocolate, but that was a serious fail. So I tried something else.
5. So the stars are made out of fondant. I will tell y'all; I bought the fondant at JoAnn (actually my Mom bought it for me) and it was already colored. Since this was my first time using it I didn't want to mess with trying to make it from scratch. Anyway, I broke out the trust pasta roller again and rolled this stuff out supper thin. This is where I wish I had pictures; for each star I cut the fondant with a tiny square cutter that was maybe an inch (or 3/4in...i didn't measure it) across. Then I used the wide end of an icing tip to cut out the curves. It took some practice to get the curve just right.
6. After I had all bajillion of the little stars cut out I stuck them on the chocolate disks. They didn't really need anything to make them stick, they just stuck.
7. Lastly, I used black icing to pipe the outer ring. I had every intention of actually writing "Steelers" on all the toppers, but my edible marker wouldn't work on the chocolate and I didn't have a tip small enough to pipe it on.
If anyone out there in internet land has any ideas for next time, I am all ears.
HERE WE GO STEELERS! HERE WE GO!
=)

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