Hello everyone! I'm making some graduation cupcakes next week and the customer has asked for grad caps, books, and grad scrolls. I wanted to make them ahead of time, but I was wondering would the fact that they are dried out be less appealing to the customer? Should I make them last minute? It's hot and humid where I am (Michigan), so I was thinking it might be a good idea to make them out of gumpaste just so they hold up, but I don't want guests at her party to have to remove a part of their cupcake and throw it away. Advice?
Hi Claire: I have the same concerns as you do. I've tried to use completely edible decorations ever since a nephew ate a cinnamon stick I'd used to decorate egg nog cupcakes during the holidays (tip: now I use pirouette cookies).
One solution is to use chocolate transfers. They are just candy wafers melted and piped into decorations by tracing over images on wax paper. Here are some examples including a graduation set.
You can also use Peanut Butter Cup candies as graduation caps with candy clay as the mortar boards. There are regular and mini sizes, plus I found some once in white chocolate - but you could dip if you want colors.
Another option is to use candy clay / modeling chocolate for your decorations. They can be molded just like fondant/gumpaste but are completely edible.
All these techniques can be made in advance (very big plus!) and popped on to the cupcakes when you frost. Chocolate transfer info is available here on Cake Central (search in the forums), plus google. Lots of candy clay info using both search methods.
Hope this helps. Have fun!
Regarding the people I know, the fondant cupcake toppers almost always get removed and thrown out. Eating a blob of fondant is just not appealing to a good portion of people (younger kids probably love it though...hello sugar rush!).
I would go ahead and make these toppers ahead of time mainly because I couldn't imagine waiting till the last minute to make a ton of small caps, books and scrolls while also worrying about baking and decorating the cupcakes.
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