Lovely Little Ladybugs!

Omigosh I am so excited I was actually able to make these!  I've been wondering for some time now why people bother to use fondant and gumpaste for cakes, cupcakes and cookies.  I mean, they look beautiful, but you can't eat them despite the fact they are edible.  You can eat fondant, but it's not tasty.  So what's the point?  Then I made the Minnie Mouse Cupcakes and it was so much fun...I started to get it.  It's about channeling your inner elementary art student days and being creative.  You can make anything you want!

Now, I've never been terribly good at art - drawing, sculpture, visualizing - so I'm going to start with only the most elementary designs.  Like a ladybug.  How can you screw that up?

I began by making a batch of strawberry cupcakes.  I used a box mix and added a package of vanilla pudding and used 1 cup of milk instead of water to make it a bit tastier.  While they cooled I began shaping the ladybugs using gumpaste.

Gumpaste becomes hard pretty quickly and is very sticky, so you can use Vegetable Oil to help keep your hands free of gummy residue and to keep the gumpaste pliable.  Rub some on your hands and coat your work surface before handling the gumpaste. I used it quite generously with no negative effects of the design.  Using smallish amounts of gumpaste at a time, work some coloring into the paste using your hands.  I didn't use gloves and the dye made a mess of red all over my hands, but it washed right off.  I used Wilton No-Taste Red gel dye.  I could not photograph this process since I didn't want my camera to be covered in red!

Next, I made odd oval shapes in different sizes.  I worked some black dye into a separate ball of gumpaste and then used it to make the heads and dots, as in the photo above.

Then it was time to mix up some buttercream.

Buttercream Icing

2 sticks butter, room temperature

4 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk


In large mixing bowl, beat butter on high speed until fluffy.  Add three cups of sugar, one at a time until combined.  Add vanilla extract and milk, along with last cup of sugar.   Beat until smooth.  Add more milk, one teaspoon at a time, to reach desired consistency of frosting.


I removed about 3/4 of the icing from the bowl and mixed green dye into it to make the "grass".  I used a Wilton Tip #233.  To make the grass, squeeze the icing in the piping bag gently and lift up as you stop squeezing.  After covering the cupcake completely with grass, place the ladybugs randomly on top.

I divided the remaining 1/4 of icing and split it into 2 bowls.  One I dyed yellow, the other light purple.  I used a Wilton Tip #2D. Before piping the flower on top of the cupcake, I made a few practice flowers to get a sense of the pressure to use and just how it worked in general.

Once I felt I had the hang of it,  I piped some flowers randomly on the cupcake and used tweezers to add one white dragee in the center of each flower.

And then the last step - adding a white picket fence around my little ladybug garden.  I picked up some cupcake wrappers I found at my local Michaels Craft Store:

And Voila!!

I honestly think it's so amazing you can go from a simple, plain cupcake to something so special and cute!

I'm pretty excited to try some new sculpture and other avenues of decoration I have resisted.  I'm not sure what I'm going to try next, but the sky is the limit!!!  Happy Spring.  :)