Anna's Edible Arrangements: Happy Birthday Endya

11-21-10 ENDYA
Next up for the week was an order of strawberry cupcakes with chocolate icing. Sophia wanted something for her daughter, Endya's, birthday. Since I don't get into all the special cake molds, like cartoon characters, I wanted these to look as great as they tasted. I wish I would've had some special birthday cupcake wrappers though. In order to make the cupcakes special I molded some pink number 8s to top off the cupcakes. I made them in a vanilla strawberry flavor. I bought some edible markers to write Endya's name on the 8s but they wouldn't write. I don't know if it was an old marker (there's not a high demand for edible markers) or if the markers just don't work on chocolate? I'll have to investigate the issue further.
As always, transportation is one of my biggest problems. I tried to buy some plastic containers at the local store but they wouldn't sell them to me. Then I found what I was looking for but I was still nervous about transporting them because of the potential vulnerability of the cupcakes being damaged. But the cupcakes made it to work just fine and I packaged the number 8s seperate to prevent any damage. They would've been too tall to fit in the container if the numbers had been placed on top anyway. I was very pleased with my final outcome and the chocolate icing was my best so far. I don't think I can improve on it much more.

I know strawberries aren't anything special but I had to go to 3 stores
to find some good quality FRESH strawberries.

I thought the strawberries in this shot looked picture perfect.

So I cut out the center for a perfect strawberry fit.
I didn't want to bake the stawberries with the cupcakes because
I wanted them to taste fresh instead of mushy & soft after baking.

I placed the remainder inverted on top of the strawberry
which gave it more height and
also kept all of the actual cupcake.

Now for the 1st round of icing.....

Moving on up with the 2nd round.....

Ta Da

I thought this would be way too much icing but it actually wasn't.
The strawberry and cupcake center gave it the height but
didn't make the cupcake taste like it was all icing and no cake.

Just one of a dozen...

I thought they looked so nice all packed away in the box. I was so pleased with my results.

Now for a dozen 8s. This was VERY time consuming because I could only make one 8 at a time.

I topped this cupcake (which I cut and ate later) with one of the 8s
that didn't come out of the mold as perfect as I would've liked.
A tiny bit of moisture caused a small blotch in a couple of the 8s.