Ka-Chow! (You Hurt Your What?)

Disney Pixar # 7 - Cars

For Cars, I wanted to create the logos from the sides of Lightening McQueen, The King and Chick Hicks in fondant form. However, similarly to Toy Story 2 I ended up running out of time to make multiple characters, so focused my attention on the main man: LIGHTNING! KA-CHOW!

I haven't made many chocolate cakes this time round, so I thought I would have a little try with that. Again, just adapted my basic cupcake recipe and made it up as I went along! The decoration did not turn out as well as I had hoped (it is supposed to be the 95 lightning bolt logo thing as seen on McQueen's side in the pic above!) but that's usually the case when I do things like this, particularly when time is short!

Prep time: 30 mins
Cook time: 15-18 mins
Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients:

For the decorations:
300g ready to roll icing, coloured red, orange and yellow in roughly equal parts
Black edible paint/food colouring

For the cupcakes:
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
75g vanilla yogurt
100g self-raising flour
50g cocoa powder

For the butter cream:
75g margarine
150g icing sugar
few drops of vanilla essence to taste

1. Roll out your icing, then cut out and paint the designs onto them, as per the photos above. Leave these to one side to dry. To create the multi-toned fondant for the lightning bolts, place the three colours side by side, squish together then roll out, as so: 
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a bun tray with cupcake cases.
3. Beat the margarine and sugar together until creamy, then beat the egg and yogurt into the mixture. Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the bowl then fold into the mixture until just combined.
4. Place a tablespoon of the mixture into each cupcake case then bake for 15-18 minute until firm and springy to touch. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.
5. Once the cupcake have cooled, prepare the butter cream by placing all of the ingredients into a bowl and beating until smooth and creamy. Spread a little icing over each of the cupcakes, then place a circle of red fondant over this. Add the lightning bolt and "95" logo on top of this, using a little butter cream to stick each piece down.
6. Best served with a cup of tea whilst watching Cars with friends :-)

Next time it's Ratatouille, and I'll be experimenting with some savoury cupcakes...

Happy Thoughts
x