Vanilla Cupcakes Dipped in Fondant Icing

All by herself with the boys...

The story of these cupcakes must begin with the story of another cake. A birthday cake. A friend of mine announced a birthday dinner the day before it was to happen. I didn't have a present for him! Neither did Nooboy. So, I thought I'd make a cake for him. I thought, why not make my first fondant cake? Sure I've never before worked with fondant. Sure I had no cakes stashed away and must bake new ones. Sure there was only one night's time to get it done. No worries. All under control. Pfft. Me and time management have long been enemies. Oh well. It came out just fine. That's right, Time Management, I owned your ass! 

Here is what that cake looked like:

I know it's a bad photo. But I was already 30 minutes late for dinner. To explain the roach, the birthday boy (who is very tall, very macho, and only slightly gay) is terrified of them, so we thought it'd be a fun addition.

After the birthday thingy had come and gone, I was left with a whole bunch of left-over marshmallow fondant, and a whole bunch of pink marshmallows (I can't seem to find white only packs). The only logical thing I could think to do with them was cupcakes. I turned the pink marshmallows into pink MMF, made a batch of cupcakes, painstakingly embossed my rolled MMF with stamps and covered them. And they all mysteriously disappeared before my Canon had a look at them.

I still had a large-ish stash of MMF left, and since I've been smitten with CakeJournal's poured fondant cupcakes for so long, I thought I'd give it a go (I was also a bit lazy to go through rolling, stamping and covering them all over again). I was a bit unsure of how it would go with MMF, but it worked a treat. I just microwaved the fondant with a little bit of boiling water, stirred until it was all mixed in, and gradually added more water until it looked to be the right consistency.

Aren't they cute?

An army of cupcakes waiting to be piped.

They were then piped royal icing and topped with a couple of cachous here and there. And just as Louise from CakeJournal promised, the cakes all had perfect little domes. The vanilla cupcake recipe is from Joy of Baking and is very easy to mix up. I prefer to pipe the batter into the cupcake cases. I find I get a more even result like this, and can control exactly how much batter goes into into each one.