Baby Shower Cupcakes for Wendy - Vanilla Magnolia Bakery Cupcakes with Fondant Shoes

Recently, a lovely lady called Wendy in our finance team left on maternity leave.  It is her first baby, and her Mum is coming from Korea to be with her during the birthing process.  It is a very exciting time for her.

A morning tea was held at work in Wendy's honour.  I like to bake for such occasions (surprising, eh?) and decided to make some cupcakes for Wendy.  I initially thought I should go for fancy flavours, but in the end, decided to make vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing. The classic always go down well.  Wendy is having a little girl, which made the choice of icing colour for my cupcakes a doddle - pretty pink!

I made these cupcakes over there nights.  On a Tuesday evening, I made the little fondant shoe cake toppers while incongruously watching Seinfeld on the TV:

The mould that I used is this one, in case you are interested in getting one yourself.  I stretched my shoes a little when they came out of the mould, which is  why mine look a little different to the ones in the mould photo.  But hey, I am not going to freeze the mould for a few minutes in between making each shoe, especially when I am making 24 of them at night after work.

To mix things up a bit, I used Magnolia Bakery's vanilla cupcake recipe for the cupcakes:

I bought the Magnolia Bakery cookbook from the Magnolia Bakery in NYC last year, so it has special significance for me.  However, the recipe is also online here. 

I used my favourite icing recipe - the Primrose Bakery vanilla icing recipe - and coloured it pale pink.  It just seemed less over the top than the Magnolia Bakery recipe, which uses tons of icing sugar and butter.  I piped the icing on the cupcakes in a rose pattern (which uses way less icing than the "icecream" swirl), then placed a little shoe on top of each cake, with a few strategically placed pastel coloured cachous: 

I think they were very pretty, and Wendy seemed to be delighted with them.  I also got some rave reviews from my colleagues, so these were a winner all round.