Caketoppers Halloween Cupcake Toppers

Tomorrow is the culmination of a few weeks of precision planning (and a great deal of stress) – we are converting our driveway into a ‘Spooky Pop-Up Cafe’ to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. We had planned to hold a Macmillan ‘World’s Biggest Coffee Morning’ on the official date – but everyone who knows me will know I leave things to the last minute! Anyhow, the cakes are made – LOTS of them – the gazebo is in place, and we’ve even managed to hang a few decorations (that task we will throw ourselves into in the morning).

My children wanted to make cupcakes, which is straightforward enough. I even managed to purchase some fancy laser-cut cases in a Halloween theme. But I wasn’t sure how to decorate them. And then Caketoppers kindly came to the rescue. Caketoppers produce the most incredible printed icing cake and cupcake toppers that instantly transform plain icing into masterpieces! We gratefully received several sheets, each containing 12 Halloween-themed circular disks of printed icing – of three different designs.

Inside the packaging (they were really well packaged) are comprehensive instructions on how to transfer the icing topper to your cupcake/cake … I skim-read them, purely because I was in a rush as I had SO many cupcakes to decorate (and not a huge amount of time!) If Caketoppers read this, they’ll probably pull apart my methodology as being ‘wrong’ – but it worked 🙂 All I ask is that you read the instructions – don’t necessarily copy the way I’ve done it.

The first thing I did was chop the top off all my cupcakes, because (yes I’m blaming them) the children overfilled the cases before they went into the oven. I then made up a small amount of buttercream to use as a ‘glue’ to hold the iced disk on the top. I bought some ready-to-roll white icing which I rolled thin (2-3cm) and then used my scone cutter to make circles that neatly fit the circumference of the cupcake.

Now, removing the icing disk from the sheet isn’t something you rush. I used my faithful pallet knife as I know I can use it to slide between the topper and the base sheet. I made 72 cupcakes, and only spoiled one topper – so I think that’s good going! So I used the pallet knife to lift the topper. I then dipped a finger into some water to very lightly dampen the top of the icing disk – and then dropped the topper into place. I then put a tiny amount of buttercream on the top of the cupcake, and I dropped the decorated disk on. As a final flourish I assembled one of the laser-cut cases and popped the cupcake into it. Voila!

Now, I am REALLY impressed with the final spread of cupcakes – remember that I’m a cake decorating novice. I KNOW that tomorrow, when all the cafe visitors stop by they’ll all comment, because they are eye-catching and really effective. Little will they know how easy they were to make 🙂

You can purchase your own printed icing toppers online directly from Caketoppers. Go and take a look – they really are fantastic x