Hailey's 3rd BIRTHDAY CUPPYCAKES

Hailey's turning 3!!! Her mum and dad (Cylynn & Eminem a.k.a. "The Riddler" -- yes, private joke peeps...) said she was into her blue-ballet-princess phase which, in no way was easy to combine baking-wise. Princesses have always been pink to me. Ballet, well, there's nothing you use in ballet that's easy to design. And blue -- well, Hailey's a baby girl. I smell a predicament.

So, the challenge begins..

I started out brainstorming how to design the cupcakes. I decided that a ballerina would wear ballet shoes, a princess would have a crown and wand ("scepter" I think is the appropriate word.. getting it confused with a ballerina-fairy now!), and the little girl is turning three. Blue would be the base color of the cupcakes and all the miniature candies would be pink. Predicament solved.

Although I was tempted to simply use buttercream icing for all, using mini-candies out of sugar and putting them on buttercream in humid Philippines was not going to be a good idea. So using homemade white chocolate fondant (no more ready-to-roll store-bought! Applause!!! Applause!!!) I wrapped the surfaces of the cupcakes with blue fondant discs, embossed with daisies. This way, everything would stay dry until cake time.

First up was creating the daisy wand-heads (scepter-heads!), with silver dragee centers:

Second was to make the bases of the ballet shoes. Ballet shoes have no rigid shapes, which is exactly why this was the HARDEST part of the whole project.. A single shoe could never look exactly right!

In the raw

Stringing the soles

Then, cut-out the mini-3's...

I attached the daisy head to the wand handle (scepter handle!!) which was in yellow to spruce up the colors a bit.

sorry for the unfocused photo =P

The ballet shoes looked much more real with the pink laces! 

And so, the final products... Ballet shoes, #3 buttons and wands (SCEPTERS!!!)

Note the crown in the background. Threw it in as a freebie.

Teal shades are bluer in reality. Camera settings weren't  cooperative in the shade.

'Til next project!