Ruby Wedding Cupcakes!

These were made as a gift for my Auntie and Uncle's Ruby Wedding Anniversary so I had fun searching various cake-y websites for some fancy decoration pieces. I used a red food colouring paste for the buttercream, as gels and liquids don't produce anywhere near as vibrant a colour. For a lot of the toppers I used a crimped cookie cutter pressed into ready made icing and then went in with a toothpick to create a sort of make-shift impressed design. On the white ones I painted a light coat of silver lustre dust over the top. Most of the glitter fell into the grooves so the rest of the toppers just had a slight pearly shade which was lovely. Lustre dust comes as a powder and needs a drop of any clear spirit (don't worry you can't taste the alcohol!) added to it to make a liquid that you can then embellish your icing with. I also used this to paint over the little J & B's that were very fiddly to make! I really need to experiment with a stronger icing than ready made for molding smaller objects. I ordered these adorable edible rubies from a website called craftcompany.co.uk. Yes they make such a thing as edible rubies! They advise you use tweezers to position them so you don't leave finger prints on them. It was a little tricky to ply them out of the packaging without damaging them but definitely worth it :) The tons of  little red roses were made from ready made icing as usual. The technique is actually really easy and quick once you get the hang of it. Although I cheated a little bit with the love hearts and used a cutter. I think that's about it! The pretty edgings were from the same website that I've mentioned and simply wrap around your normal cupcake case to make them look all fancy.