Cupcake recipe correction!

One of the things we tried hard to do with our book is make it easy to get started making tiny foods. Scale is one of the hardest things to get right when you're just starting out. How much frosting should you mix for a single cupcake? It gets easier and easier to eyeball relative amounts the more you work with clay, but it can be a bit frustrating to get the scale right when you're just beginning.

So, we wrote up our ingredients lists as a series of spheres of clay with two size references: a written one (3/8") and a visual one so that you could hold up your clay to the page and quickly see whether you had the right amount. In theory, this system works beautifully. It does rely on one crucial thing: that there are no mistakes! Unfortunately, we're not perfect, and the cupcake recipe has a mistake in the ingredients list. The written amount is correct (3/8" sphere), but the visual amount actually depicts a 5/8" sphere. Thank you to crafty goat for pointing out the mistake!

As you can see from the photo at left, there's a significant difference in size between a sphere with a 5/8" diameter and one with a 3/8" diameter. In real food terms, 5/8" is about the size of a kalamata olive or a small kumquat, while 3/8" is about the size of a fat pea. Volume-wise, the 5/8" sphere is about 4 times larger than the 3/8" sphere.

You can certainly make a much larger cupcake. However, you'll also need to scale up the frosting amounts. And you'll need to increase the baking time to about 25 minutes for a cupcake with a base made from a 5/8" sphere of clay.

If you'd like to try your hand at the cupcake recipe, it's available in full from two great online craft resources: craftster, and Women's Day.

Cookie Variation: Witches

If there wasn't already enough food out there to inspire us, holidays always give us further inspiration to find a way to make any holiday icon into a dessert. This is easiest to do with cookies, in particular, as anyone who has gone to a kitchen store recently knows - evidenced through the cookie cutter displays which now take up whole walls to accommodate every season, animal, and holiday icon in existence. My personal cookie cutter inventory includes the traditional (christmas tree) and more unique (salmon). With all of this choice, unfortunately, comes tough decisions then about what features embody certain icons.

In the case of Halloween, I have always found it tough to make the perfect witch, as there are so many variations on witches and not one standard for how a witch has to look. Many cookies are a profile of a witch on a broom, or just the witch's hat without the person underneath. Since the broom could be too fragile in miniature polymer clay, and the hat not inclusive of the witch herself, I've always gone back to making just the witch's head for the perfect cookie. But what features to focus on? The pointed nose and chin, the prominent hat, or just getting all the colors correct?

The three above variations showcase each of these, which you can add to the collection of variations already in the Gingerbread Cookie recipe in the book. Each of the above is roughly 1/2" tall and work well with the sugar cookie base, with granny smith green, orange and black each mixed with translucent for the icing.

I kept all of the witches friendly, and gave each a small red smile (or leers, should you prefer to make them more sinister). The eyes are small black glass marbles, which can typically be found in the scrapbooking aisle of a craft store.

I'd be interested to know which witch is preferred - or if there are any other favorite variations people make in the edible version (purple hats, whole witches which wouldn't be too fragile, etc).

I think my favorite is the profile witch - although not as cute, she looks like she could emit the shrill cackle needed when flying through the night air.

~Susan

Cupcake variation: Halloween

The best part about making your own food (tiny and real) is that you can completely customize it! Craftzine and cut out + keep featured our candy corn stud earrings recipe today, and we were inspired to play around with it a bit to show you another way to use the recipe.

Since Halloween is right around the corner, we thought we'd show you how to combine two of the recipes from the book to create a fun seasonal cupcake. For the Halloween cupcake, make the base exactly the same way as the original recipe. Substitute orange for the red in the frosting ingredients to create a pale orange frosting for the top of the cupcake.

To make the tiny candy corn, scale down the candy corn recipe so that the ball of yellow is about 1/16", the orange is about half of that, and the white is a teeeeeeny ball about half the size of the orange. It's a very small piece of candy corn!

To make sure that the candy sticks nice and securely to the frosting, add a dab of translucent liquid clay to the back of your candy corn, and press it into the frosting. The liquid clay will act like a glue, and create a very secure bond between the candy corn and the frosting once the cupcake is baked.

You can make two for a fun pair of earrings, add one to a orange and black beaded necklace, loop it into a cell phone fob, or even make a bunch for a set of stitch markers!

Candy corn!

Just 10 days left til Halloween, which means two important things:

1. We need to figure out and properly construct our costumes.
Is there a food costume I can make that will be both cool and still allow me sufficient mobility to salsa dance? I'm stumped. Susan has fabulous plans to be something foodie and a hilarious pop culture reference from the 80s.

2. It's totally acceptable to eat large amounts of candy corn!
Yes, people either love it or hate it. We happen to love really good candy corn. What about vegetable-shaped candy that tastes like marshmallow and honey is there not to love?

If you're someone who loves real candy corn, or even just loves the festive playfulness of Halloween, then why not whip up a pair of candy corn stud earrings? Women's Day has excerpted our recipe for candy corn stud earrings from our cookbook, and you can find the complete recipe on their website!

Happy crafting!

* Photo copyright Zachary Williams.

Tiny food burgers!

Curious to know how to make your own tiny burgers? We made a video showing you all the steps!

Before you watch, it's helpful to have the following ingredients already assembled on your work surface (all clays are Premo unless otherwise noted, and a ball is a smooth sphere of clay):

Bun:
1/16" ball white
1/4" ball ecru
3/8" ball ecru

Burger, Cheese, & Tomato:
1/4" ball burnt sienna
3/16" ball cadmium yellow
3/16" ball cadmium red

Lettuce:
3/16" ball translucent
1/16" ball light green (* we usually use Sculpey III Granny Smith)
1/8" green

Tools & Other materials:
raw sienna artists' (soft) pastel
double-ball stylus (small tip)
paintbrush
headpin (2", fine gauge)

Have fun customizing your own burger! Maybe you prefer your lettuce on top of your patty, or your patty to be square. Or get really creative and add mushrooms or onions on top!

Tiny Burger Recipe Video