Just thought I’d say hi with a few Aloha Cupcakes.
Hi there. Hello. Howdy. How ya doing?
These are Pineapple Mango Cupcakes. All tropical like. With graham cracker crumbs for sand and fondant flowers for the leis. They’d be super cute for a luau party. They’re really pretty easy to make once you have all the pieces and parts.
First start with some cupcakes. Any cupcakes. But if you want to try the ones I made, here’s the recipe.
* I pureed the pineapple in a food processor. I'm not a big fan of fruit chunks. Flavor yes. Chunks. Not so much.
So that’s the cupcakes. But what about the fun stuff. Who’s ready to play?
Okay, fondant first.
You’ll need some to make these lovely little leis.
You’ll need:
Fondant
Icing colors
Toothpicks
Powdered sugar
Wooden skewers
String or twine
Oh… and a Flower Plunger [5].
Break off a small amount of fondant. Dip your toothpick into the icing color of your choice and wipe it on your fondant. Begin kneading it to incorporate the color… but not all the way. Sprinkle a little powdered sugar on your work surface and rolling pin.
Then roll out the fondant evenly and pretty thin. By not kneading the color completely into the fondant, you’ll get these marbled looking streaks.
Then use the flower plunger. Cut the shapes along the color variations to make flowers that appear to vary in shade.
Repeat with a few other colors if you like.
White works, too.
The flower plunger cuts the shape and also creates an indention in the center of the flower when you press down.
Then you can use wooden skewers to pierce through the center easily. Slide flowers on the skewers and let dry. Make these the day before so the fondant has time to dry out a little. I let them rest on a baking sheet overnight. Just make sure they aren’t pressed together tightly on the skewer or they will dry attached to each other and be difficult to separate without breaking the little flowers.
When they are dry, slide about 50 flowers (depending on the thickness) on a string about 12 inches long and tie a knot.
That’s it.
But what about the cute Aloha signs?
When the cupcakes are cool and frosted, dip them in a bowl of finely ground/crushed graham cracker crumbs.
Sorry, forgot the photo for this one. But you get the idea.
Then make your signs. Just kidding.
I made it easy for you with these…
You’ll also need:
Wooden cookie sticks
X-acto Knife
Scissors
Cut the cookie sticks down in size. Mine were about 12 inches long so I cut them down to pieces about 4 inches.
Print out the tags on heavyweight paper and cut them out individually. Then use an x-acto blade to cut two slits along the diagonal on each side of the tag.
Slip the sticks through the paper and then insert the sticks straight down into the center of the cupcake.
Like so.
When I first planned these out in my head, I thought they leis would be super cute draped over the signs. But in practice, they worked out better laying around the sign and on the sand.
Hope you like em!
Aloha and … Bye for now.
URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829049875/
[2] Instructions here.: https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_cut_a_mango/
[3] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829659936/
[4] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829660594/
[5] Flower Plunger: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ECUFJK?ie=UTF8&tag=bakerella-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000ECUFJK
[6] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829050231/
[7] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829660846/
[8] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829048383/
[9] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829048467/
[10] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829658984/
[11] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829659266/
[12] Image: http://www.bakelove.com/tags_aloha.pdf
[13] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829659154/
[14] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829659388/
[15] Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bakerella/4829659498/