Challenge?!
Flavor and texture wise, I bake well! But I am trying my hand at more difficult decorating.
I found out last minute I can see my little (30 year old) brother for his birthday! He loves space and he really deserves something special. How can I practice this before I see him in a month!?
Tysm in advance. š„°
by Undiron
35 Comments
They look like preprinted edible images placed on top of the cupcakes. You can probably get them on Amazon or some other site.
Just so you know these are AI created images not “real” cupcakes.
[https://mx.pinterest.com/pin/558376053818094444/](https://mx.pinterest.com/pin/558376053818094444/)
Not saying they couldn’t be done, just saying that these particular ones are AI generated.
You can try icing sugar with added water and cover the cupcakes and use food colouring with a cocktail stick and swirl the patterns on the marble ones. The blue one mix blue and cover. Then with a pastry brush dab while icing and slowly swirl. Add drops of white icing using a cocktail stick. The crumbly looking one you can use the top of the cupcake by slicing off and crumbling over the cupcake then use pastry brush to colour the top and then pipe the white lines and swirl. You can use roll out icing for a firmer cleaner look and do same just get lots of colours a palette and mix them to your desired colours. Get edible glitter too. Good luck š¤
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Other than the pic being AI generated, I think the closest you could come is to try some combination of buttercream transfer, painting with food coloring, fondant, and/or mirror glazing.
If I were going to attempt something like this, I might try piping on buttercream in various colors with a 3, 4, or 5 tip, blending a bit with a toothpick, and flipping it upside down on parchment then freezing it until you can peel the parchment off cleanly. It won’t be perfect like these (obviously, since these are AI), but it’s what I’d do to attempt something similar. You can do the thing where you put two or three colors in one piping bag, to get less harsh distinctions between colors, for the more cloudy effect like on the upper left.
You could also do a simple black, purple, and blue in the same piping bag for a galaxy swirl, then sprinkle on silver metallic stars.
This will sound bad, but if he’s into space AND has a warped sense of humor, you could make a butt cake and when he looks at you all confused, say since he like space so much, you made Ur-anus. I know it’s a bad pun, but it’s actually something that I would do. I did make a roadkill cat for my surely teenager and cocaine bear.
You could Google various ganache and see if you can make that effect. Or frost them, chill them, then dip them into royal icing. You’d need to do some secondary decorating of course.
What about airbrushing on fondant?
Looking at it, maybe try something kinda like hydro dipping but with frosting? Put your design together and blend it & such- BETTER IDEA do the thing I just said but instead of that make flat white disks of frosting on top of your cupcakes ( pipe as normal, tip upside down, press on parchment paper, refrigerate)
And then use different colors of slightly thinner icing in thin lines on top of the flat disc and blend it. You could alternatively use chocolate and dye it and then swirl it and stuff, but I think that would take longer and your time is more limited with chocolate.
Not sure if youāre comfortable because it is a process but if you make a mirror glaze and dunk the top of the cupcake in it with frosting already on like a flat layer, you can probably achieve it but you have to be quick with it. It sets pretty fast from the gelatin, or like another person said maybe the airbrush technique Iām sure you can also achieve it with fondant, but fondant is kind of gross lol
Those arenāt real. And if they were, it would take a lot of learning and practicing and effort to make anything like them.
Someone on r/cakedecorating might know – or have a better idea
Could make frosting or mousse domes same diameter as top of cupcakes, treat them as mini cakes and proceed with mirror glaze and drizzle to make all patterns as one would for a large cake. Some definitely could be airbrushed on. I imagine the easiest way to have the domes stable May be to make very thin chocolate half sphere shell and just flood them with soft filling. Hell, could even do it layered!
As they set, cut top of cupcakes to be perfectly leveled, put a bit of buttercream (or other frosting) as a āglueā and mount domes on cupcakes.
Now I want to make this ā¦.
Ask the AI. Maybe it will share some ideas. I have done that before. Sometimes it gives good ideas. Sometimes they are terrible.
My suggestion would be to focus on just one design either blue white or a brown white and see if you can get the effects in the bottom right. That would at least be a good starting point.
You could probably get the affect with a dark blue buttercream along the edge and a separate white buttercream in the centre and then flattening out on the cake itself. Flattening could blend the colours and create the effect. It will take some practice but should be doable.
The stars have many options. White buttercream dots, royal icing dots, yellow icing dots, you could also buy silver balls or some other edible decoration. Another option would be to stick to a brown background and to create a brown ānebulaā from some spun sugar.
Look, I didn’t mean to hate on everyone else’s comments but while this photo may be AI generated I think these are totally doable!
One thing you’re gonna want though for such vibrant colors: poppy paints! They’re edible paints for foods that are crazy easy to use and vibrantly bright! So awesome!
Once you have those, I recommend a [rolled buttercream](https://blog.borderlandsbakery.com/cookie-decorating-resources/rolled-buttercream-recipe/) recipe! I’ve never used one myself but seen some really cool things done with them and I think they would take the paint really well.
Roll out the buttercream put on your cupcake and give it a few hours for the frosting to crust and then paint your planets! š For the stars splatter it on at the end!
I think you can totally do it, go for it!
My advice would be to look up galaxy cakes. They were popular circa 2017 or 2019…something like that.
There are a lot of approaches you can take, but the best-looking one, in my opinion, is to mirror glaze a cake and then use luster dust and chocolate spheres to decorate it. There used to be a fantastic tutorial on Cupcakes & Cardio, but the blog owner sunset their page a while back. I assume that one of the popular blogs like Preppy Kitchen or Sally’s Baking Addiction has a galaxy cake tutorial. I don’t think Cupcake Jemma does galaxy cakes, but her you tube channel is fantastic for learning about decorating.
An airbrush and maybe the top of a chocolate sphere using a mold? Then add the extra details with more colored melted chocolate and painting with food coloring
First step: download AI
It does seem like it’s handpainted.
Cause with fondant, the closest u can achieve is ‘marbling effect’ for the background..
Definitely some airbrush or ‘dab’ motions in there too..
I can’t paint at all but I’ve seen alot of bakers who painted their fondant n they always turn out awesome!
For the stones, probably can try with granulated sugar for that effect?
Not sure about cupcakes but Iāve bought chocolates with similar designs
Fondant+air brushing could probably achieve something similar to it I think.
This seems to be difficult but if it is the fondant used for texture, you can try it. Maybe search for some popular chefs on YouTube or Instagram. I follow Amaury Guichon on Instagram and he bakes great cakes and chocolates. You must check his profile for this. He has tried this for cheesecake.
Looks like AI
Following up on the painting idea, the Butch Bakery does painted chocolate disks on top of a blob of frosting. While I havenāt painted the disks when I have done it at home, it does make decorating cupcakes easier/faster (because I suck at making pretty, poofy, frosting swirls). Also, practicing decorating chocolate disks seems like lower effort for artistic returns than piping frosting (and probably more enjoyable to eat the failures).
[this article/ad contains a picture of the cupcakes with painted disks.](https://uncrate.com/butch-bakery-cupcakes/)
Also, donāt stress too much about out how it looks for kids stuff; they will love it because it is cake with frosting. Showing off for the other adults howeverā¦.
Rosanna Pansino has a mirror galaxy cake tutorial, you could probably recreate it on cupcakes if you had tiny pour containers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZhV63pkDBw&t=124
I’d use polymer clay.
Iāve only seen this kind of swirly stuff done with chocolate
watered down icing
I have an idea, kinda like how they do galaxy cakes you could try doing this with cupcakes but instead you dip it into a thicker version of the icing then use a toothpick and some thin icing to speckle the stars on
You might be able to use the technique that Sugarologie used to make these [planet decorated hot chocolate bombs](https://youtu.be/_zOFs-tQwl4?si=HdLwYzOFS2gNh1YI), though instead of making two halves, just o place one on top of buttercream.
I saw comments on these being AI generated, and I’m sorry I have no idea how to do these. But if you do attempt to make an IRL version of these, I’d love to see what you did!
Wow this is so beautiful and perfect for me!
It might be ai (I know it is) but that doesnāt mean it would be impossible
My best guess for how to get this would be white vanilla icing then using edible paint (not sure if thatās the technical term) sprayed on, then maybe a very delicate brush to mix so thereās no hard lines
Id need Jesus to take the wheel on that one haha those look awesome. Are we sure they are real? I mean they could be, its very cool
I have a direct-to-food printer (called an Eddie printer) that allows you to print on iced sugar cookies, fondant, etc. There is a strong possibility that if they are not AI, they are direct printed. NOT edible images.