For Jill's early birthday celebration, Cat wanted to make custom cupcakes for the Fifth Harmony inspired "Me & My Girls" birthday party. Jill is on a dance team so Cat wanted to include the bows she wears as a part of her uniform. She also likes nail polish and mustaches.. as most kids do. Jill's favorite colors are teal and lilac so that decided the color theme of the cupcakes.
She also wanted a small cake. The cake took a bit more time and thought to design. Cat mentioned that Jill loves High School Musical and thought a cake that had their iconic red curtains and a silhouette of a girl jumping to signify her jumping into her 12th year would be cool. I put the ideas together and came up with something I felt I could make. To complete the cake, Cat came up with a favorite quote of theirs that was from the movie.
A few days before Cat was to come to pick up the cake and cupcakes, I prepped some of the decorations. To make the mustaches, I used black fondant and a combination of two cookie cutters, because I didn't have one in the shape of a mustache.
I first cut them into lips
then reshaped using the bottom of a heart and refined using a knife.
It wasn't complete without a little curling at the edges.
The night before the pick up, I baked the red velvet cake and Funfetti cupcakes.
The day of, I first crumb-coated the red velvet cake using cream cheese frosting.
So crummy. I placed this into the freezer to speed up the process.
While the cake chilled, I frosted the cupcakes. Half with aqua blue and the other half with lilac-y colored frosting.
I placed the fondant mustaches, which I had dusted with some pearl luster dust, onto four of the cupcakes.
The other eight cupcakes were to be hand-piped which I do by using wax paper cones filled with colored frosting. The only other tool I use is a tooth pick, which I use to smooth the frosting and to fix edges and lines. There would have been more pictures of the process, but I usually get too focused to stop. I need another person to take pictures for me.
The bow designs were based off of ones that were similar to ones that Jill owned.
I wanted the nail polish bottle cupcakes to have backdrops that imitated common nail designs. For the sake of time, I chose two fairly simple designs: polka dots and chevron. These polka dots were sugar pearls.
I really liked the way the cupcakes turned out. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the liners I used. They had mustaches on the bottom!
The night before, I had made the stars and little jumping girl out of fondant. The stars were made using a star cookie cutter that was actually too big. I cut them out using the cutter and then used a knife to make them smaller. The little girl was free handed using a knife, so she's kinda funny looking.
Stars wouldn't be stars if they weren't gold. To make the paint, I mixed gold dust into a bit of vanilla extract.
Using a clean makeup eyeshadow brush, I brushed the gold paint mixture onto the stars. I stuck them into an extra cupcake to dry.
After a little while, I did a final frosting on the cake, and piped "JILLLL!!!" on one side and "You can do it just know that I believe" on the other. I piped "Happy" and "Birthday" onto the stars, made the curtains out of red crepe paper, and assembled everything onto the cake. It looked a little plain, so I added some black sugar dust.
The wires I found are suppose to be used for floral arrangements. I cleaned everything before using of course. The stars ended up being a bit heavy, and the cake wasn't dense enough to keep the stars up higher than where they ended up sitting.
Overall, I thought everything turned out to be very cute.
That evening, Cat picked everything up and took them over to Jill's. Everything arrived safely, and Cat told me the mustache cupcakes were the first to go.
The birthday girl, Jill! She loved everything :)
Happy early birthday, JILLLLLLL!!!!!
