Our friends at Walzwerk, a wonderful East German restaurant, recently celebrated their 10 year anniversary, and I was asked to make 100 cupcakes to commemorate the occasion. An exciting challenge!
I wanted to make something very special with the "W" logo, which as you can see from the awning is a very industrial, straight-sided logo that also looks like smokestacks. I went to the store and bought a tub of fondant (also known as gum paste), and had fun playing with it. It's so easy - you just roll it out like cookie dough, cut it, and stick it on. It has the consistency of play dough, so it's easy to use but will dry out if you leave it out too long.
I bought a set of mini cookie cutters in the alphabet, so that all of the letters would look uniform. The "W" didn't look right though, but I found that when I used the "M" upside down, it had more of that straight-sided look.
To emulate the look of the smoke stacks, I used a toothpick dipped in vanilla bean paste and made pinpricks and lines at the top of each one (hopefully this helped them not look so much like upside down M's as well). It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed figuring out the process. The cupcakes were dark chocolate, with chocolate fudge frosting - next time I might not use the star tip, but something that would give them a little bit less height - that frosting is so thick it will not lay down for anything. Nevertheless, I was pleased with them.
It's great to be able to participate in your friends' milestone events, and contribute to the celebration in a personal way.
