It was my good friend Lucy's 40th birthday this week and she had a party last weekend to celebrate. I offered to bring some cupcakes, as I'd seen some fun ones decorated to look like disco balls on Pinterest.
I couldn't just do cupcakes though so decided to make another giant cupcake. I used a silicone mould this time and used the same quantity of cake mixture as for Sophie's birthday cake (see my previous blog post here). It came out of the mould very well, although I slightly overcooked the top this time.
For this cake, I decorated the the bottom part of the cake with chocolate fingers. I wanted to do white chocolate fingers but couldn't find any so used milk chocolate fingers instead. I made some chocolate buttercream to stick the fingers on with, which was a good decision as white buttercream would have showed through the fingers. I made sure that I kept the fingers vertical as I went around the cake and it was very quick and easy to do (it took me no more than about 5 minutes!)
After making my daughter's giant birthday cupcake, I decided I needed a new nozzle for piping large stars and bought a very large plastic 8-point star. I then decorated the piped top with pink fondant stars and silver balls on the tip of each star. The whole cake sat on a board covered with pink fondant edged with a grey ribbon and I added Lucy's name and age in white which I then painted with silver lustre.
I also made the promised cupcakes and decorated some as disco balls and the others to match the giant cupcake with piped buttercream and pink fondant stars.
To make the disco balls I coloured some fondant light grey. I rolled and cut this into long strips which I then cut into squares. Once these had dried, I painted with them with a silver sparkle lustre dust (mixed with vodka so the liquid evaporated and didn't make the fondant soggy). I topped the cupcake with a thin layer of buttercream and put the disco ball together: it proved to be a bit fiddly as, after I had put three rows of full squares on, I had to cut lots of little pieces to fit into the remaining spaces, such as long thin bits and triangular bits for the corners. The overall effect was good though and I finished it off with a healthy sprinkling of silver sparkle!
With a seven year old girl I can see I may do a disco themed party at some point over the next few years so will probably get to make these again, but next time I will try a different way. I will cut a circle of fondant big enough to cover the top of each cupcake and then I will cut the "mirror" pieces out of the circle so that I have all the pieces already cut, including the thin strips and corners ready sized up. I hope this will work and although it will need a bit more time and effort up-front, it should make putting the cakes together much quicker.
Lucy had a great party and seemed very pleased with the cupcakes and her surprise birthday cake so it was all worth the effort!
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