How to Make Chocolate Cupcake Toppers

I experimented with making these little white chocolate Maisys 

this week for Jenna's birthday cupcakes. Had I been able to find 

these in the store, I would have bought them and saved myself the 

(what I thought was) trouble of making them, but Maisy -themed 

anything is hard to come by in this part of the world. So I had to 

make them, and they were so easy that I thought I'd post a tutorial 

so anyone who wanted to custom-make odd-themed edible characters 

might be convinced they were easy enough to do.

You will need:

• White chocolate
  
• Small plastic bags - doesn't matter if they have ziptops or not
  
• Toothpicks
  
• Wax paper (not in picture, sorry!)
  
• Food coloring
  
• Microwave oven
  
• Scissors
  
• Drawing or picture you want to turn into edible decoration
  

Step 1:

• Find a picture you want to make edible decoration out of.
  
• Or draw one (the heart and tree on the left are examples) on paper.
  

Step 2:

• Place a sheet of wax paper over it, large enough to cover the entire picture.
  

Step 3:

• Heat white chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl in the microwave oven 30 seconds at a time until just melted, stirring occasionally.
  
• Add food coloring to desired color. I find it useful to use a toothpick to add tiny amounts of coloring at a time because a whole drop is too much. Stir to mix well.
  
• Transfer tinted white chocolate to small plastic bag and snip a tiny corner off as shown. 
  

Step 4:

• Squeeze all the white chocolate towards that corner of the bag and squeeze out as much air as possible through the tiny hole.
  
• Pipe an outline of white chocolate on the wax paper, using the outline of the picture underneath as a guide. If the chocolate hardens as you work, put the bag in the microwave oven for 10 seconds at a time to soften it. 
  

Step 5:

• If you are using a second color, repeat Step 3 and use the new color to fill in the details within the outline. Try not to leave gaps between the filling and the outline, unless you are planning to do a lacy/filigree sort of design like with the heart:
  

Step 6:

• Keep filling in the space within the outline with more white chocolate, tinting it as you need to. Maisy is largely white, so I just used more of the earlier white chocolate to fill her in. I also snipped the original hole a little bigger to allow faster flow of chocolate as I squeezed the bag. It doesn't matter if the chocolate is lumpy within the outline 
  

because you can use a toothpick to "stir" it and smooth it out.

Step 7:

• Add final details. I used regular semisweet chocolate chips (melted) for Maisy's eyes, nose and belly-button, rather than tint white chocolate brown. 
  

Step 8:

• Add a "stake" at the bottom of your decorations to enable it to be pushed into the cake. This is as simple as piping a rectangular shape that is touching the bottom part of the figures.
  

Step 9:

• Let dry half an hour.
  
• Gently peel the wax paper away from the figures and stick them into your cake.
  
• I used a star nozzle to pipe frosting on the tops of the cupcakes before sticking the edible figures in. The frosting was only about a quarter inch deep but with the "stake" inserted partway into the cake itself, the figures stood quite well without toppling over.
  

Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry this post isn't about Emily's Halloween costume. It's finished but yesterday we celebrated Jenna's birthday and today we were busy with the trick-or-treaters and I didn't get round to sorting through the many pictures Dave took of her in it. Will post on it tomorrow!