Decorating cupcakes

I love eating cupcakes. And while my obsession is with the cake and buttercream frosting, other members of my family are more interested in the fondant decorations. Fondant forever seemed like the ultimate challenge - the stuff that brings Food Network Cake challenge contestants to their knees - but I gathered the courage to try it out and found it surprisingly, unchallenging!

First, I picked off a small chunk of rolled fondant and added a few drops of vanilla extract. Fondant is amazingly tasteless - I think next time I might try lemon or some other type of flavoring but for today, vanilla was in the cabinet.

I also added a teeny tiny bit of food coloring gel. By teeny tiny, I mean I dipped a toothpick into the gel, about a quarter of an inch, and wiped it onto the piece of fondant. I rolled it out with a rolling pin and used mini cookie cutters to cut out the shapes.

I also topped the cupcakes with fondant. I know Kara's uses buttercream frosting and tops it with just the decoration, as I did in the first picture. But a fondant cover also gives it a really clean line, plus I wanted to step up to the challenge. I think I did okay for my first try!

I just dabbed a little frosting onto the cupcake and covered it with fondant, smoothing out the ends and applying a little pressure around the edges so it would stick to the cupcake.

After another dab of frosting under the heart shaped fondant, you just stick it onto the center of the cupcake. Voila!

We tried different decorations. I don't know why blogger keeps turning my picture around vertically, but you can still tell the shapes...