Katherine Sabbath's Flamin' Galah Cupcakes and Koala Cupcakes

For our work bushfire fundraiser bake sale, the second item that I made was the Flamin' Galah Cupcakes from p26 of Bake Australia Great by Katherine Sabbath. "Flamin' Galahs" is an Australian-ism for people who are idiotic, and Katherine has converted this phrase literally into these cute cupcakes.

Katherine takes vanilla cupcakes and vanilla buttercream and makes them into fabulous pink and grey galahs using various sweets and cashews.  There are recipes in the book for the cupcakes and buttercream which I used, but you can use your favourite vanilla cupcake and buttercream recipe to make these cupcakes.   If you are a bit unsure what recipe to use, and you don't have Katherine's book,  try the Primrose Bakery vanilla cupcake recipe here.

Tint half the buttercream grey with black food colouring (only a drop or two of liquid colouring is needed so be careful!), and half of it pink with rose pink food colouring (again, be sparing with the colour to avoid it being too lurid), and ice the cupcakes half grey and half pink to look like feathers.

Attach the beak first - the beak is made of two cashews arranged to look like an open beak, with one half on the pink icing and one hlf on the grey icing.  (Note the grey icing is at the top of the galah's head).  Next cut a white marshmallow in half and attach half of it to the cupcake near the beak to form the eye of the galah.  Use a little buttercream to attach a brown M&M to the centre of the white marshmallow for the pupil of the eye. Cut a pink marshmallow into three pieces and arrange above the eye as shown to form the crest of the galah: 

So cute!  

I also made koala cupcakes:

These are chocolate cupcakes (use your own favourite recipe) that I iced with grey buttercream.  To create the kolas, you will need pink marshmallows, black jellybeans and brown mini M&Ms.

For each koala, take a pink marshmallow and cut it in half.  Holding each half marshmallow by the large flat sides, spread some grey colouring around the edge of each half of the marshmallow, then dip it around the iced edges in dessicated coconut.  Place each half on the cupcake, cut side up, to form ears.

Sprinkle the entire iced surface of the cupcake with dessicated coconut (avoiding the sticky pink marshmallow ears).  Position a black jellybean at the base of the cupcake to serve as a nose, and a mini M&M either side of the "nose" to serve as eyes.  Ta da:

You have cuddly koala cupcakes!

The koalas are less time consuming than the galahs as there are less moving parts, so consider this if deciding to make only one of these cutey-pie cupcakes.  Whether you make both or just one, I am sure that the recipients of these cupcakes will be delighted.