joanne's 18" dolls: Cupcakes for 18” Dolls

Watch the video here.

This week I am going to show you how to create some wonderfully cute cupcakes with the mold I got from Stewart Dollhouse Creations (click here for the website and here for a direct link to the mold I am using)

I was so happy to find out that Ruth had added this mold to her line of molds because I had been trying to come up with a mold on my own for cupcakes for a while and wasn't having very much luck with it. I have found that some foods, like cupcakes are just so much easier to make with a mold. I have purchased several molds in the past from different dealers and I have made a lot of my own over the years too.

This mold is actually dual purpose depending on which scale you work in. For our 18” dolls it is a cupcake (although a small one) and for 1/12^th scale dollhouses it is one of those giant cupcake shaped cakes.

The mold itself if made of a silicone so you can bake clay directly in the mold if you desire. I do prefer to bake more than one at a time so I pop mine out of the mold.

Just like any other product or kit the first step should be to read the directions and make sure you understand them. I do stray from the directions on the video a tiny bit simply because I want my cupcakes to have a slightly domed top just like the ones from my real kitchen. In the directions you are told to cut off the clay even with the top of the mold. It is a small difference and it is totally up to you which way you do yours. The advantage of the cutting the top off is you don't have fiddle around figuring out how big of a ball of clay you need to make your cupcakes. I find after a couple of tries I was able to judge the amount of clay I needed pretty easily.

After the cupcakes are formed I like to texture the top gently with a toothbrush. This makes them look a little more like a real cupcake, I also used some golden yellow chalk to give the top edges a baked look. I didn't add the chalk to the base since I wanted to color my bases to look like they had cupcake wrappers on them.

As for flavors I only made two this time: a white cake- made with Fimo Vanilla and a chocolate made with Premo! Burnt Umber. You can of course make yours any flavor you think your dolls would like. Just look online if you are lacking ideas.

Since these are rather thick they will need to bake for about 30 minutes. Use the temperature listed on your clay packages.

After baking allow your cupcakes to cool completely before the next steps.

Since I wanted to paint on my paper cupcake liners that was my next step. I just used some acrylic craft paint and a small stiff flat brush. Just go slow and you will be fine. It might take a few coats to cover the clay color especially on the chocolate ones.

Next we get to frost and decorate them! Again if you are lacking for ideas just look online at photos of real cupcakes. There are so many ideas out there since cupcakes are so popular right now.

I used my favorite frosting on the video- caulking from the hardware store. I always get the kind that can be painted in case I want to color the frosting for some projects.

To color the frosting just add in a small amount of acrylic paint, I used the kind in the small tubes this time and it works so much better than the craft paint I have used in the past. Just be warned it just takes a tiny bit.

To apply the caulking you can either spread it on (I like to use a toothpick) or you can pipe it on. If you are piping on the white caulking you can just tape the decorating tip directly onto the tube. If you want to pipe out the caulking you have colored just make use a small plastic bag just like you would for real frosting.

To further decorate our cupcakes we can add several types of sprinkles. The tiny micro marbles (also sometime called no hole beads) are really cute and can be found in the craft store. You can also use a tiny hole punch (1/16^th “) to punch out multiple colors of colored cardstock. This is also cute for holidays if you have tiny hole punches in different shapes.

If you want to have the look of decorator sugar use some fine glitter or some sand. The glitter looks more real in this scale but use which ever you have.

You can also add swirls of chocolate or other “syrups” by using some of the Scribbles 3-D fabric paints in the appropriate colors.

These are just so fun and somewhat addictive to both make and decorate.

Here are close ups of the different cupcakes I made this week. I would love to see what you do be sure to send me a photo if you make some cupcakes.