A Kitchen In Brooklyn: doormouse

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Sasha's Kitchen: Eat Me: Alice In Wonderland Themed Cupcakes Series

As most of my readers are probably aware by now, I love making cupcakes. My passion for cupcakes is two-fold. First, I love making cupcakes in different delicious flavors and experimenting with lovely frosted cupcakes from key lime to chocolate to vanilla to gingerbread. In addition, I also love cupcake decorating and turning my cupcakes into miniature works of art. I have done cupcakes that look like the great modern art masters of the 20th century in my modern art cupcake series, and of course sushi cupcakes. Today, I introduce my series of Alice In Wonderland Cupcakes, inspired by Lewis Carroll's classic novel. I made these cupcakes together with my often-sous chef Alicia, who was actually named after the main character, Alice (her mom did her thesis dissertation on the novel). We had a fabulous time creating an original series of Alice in Wonderland cupcakes inspired by the novel - including the the Mad Hatter's hat, the White Rabbit's watch, the Doormouse, Tweedlededum, the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar.

The cupcakes that we made tasted great too (if you were willing to destroy the beautiful designs to eat them, which is quite hard to do, actually). They are gingerbread cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting. I promise to share the recipe for the plain cupcakes in a future post that focuses only on the cupcakes, but for today, I wanted to share the Alice In Wonderland inspired designs that we created last weekend. Please leave a comment on this post and let me know which ones are your favorites!

The cupcakes are all made out of colored fondant that I purchased from NY Cake in a couple of different varieties. The fondant was very easy to work with - kind of like sculpting out of Play Dough to create beautiful food art. Without further ado, here are the photographs from my "Eat Me" Alice in Wonderland Series of cupcakes:

The Mad Hatter's Hat Cupcakes:

The eccentric Mad Hatter and his hat are probably one of the most famous characters from the Lewis Carroll novel at the tea party.

The Cheshire Cat and his famous mischievous grin are one of the most recognizable images from Alice in Wonderland. We did the Cheshire Cat into a cupcake, as well as an offbeat goofy cupcake that simply personifies his grin.

The White Rabbit is one of my favorite characters from Alice in Wonderland. He is always quite worried about being late, so for him, we created cupcakes that look like his pocket watch. "I'm Late! I'm Late! For a very important date!"

The Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar is another distinctive character from the Lewis Carroll novel. We weren't sure how to make him at first, and I used some artistic license in making him blue and yellow rather than simply blue. In the end, I was quite happy how he turned out, with a small pipe in his hand.

Next up are Tweedlededum and Tweedlededee. I only made one of these rolly polly guys, since they look the same. I used some artistic license in simply creating a cupcake that personified their pants, suspenders and striped shirt, and their roundish (cupcake-like) shape. They actually first appear in Lewis Carroll's sequel, Through The Looking Glass.

Eat Me and Drink Me are one of the two famous quotes from the Lewis Novel where Alice grows, shrinks and changes form based on the potions, elixirs and other things that she ingests. We created two "Eat Me" cupcakes, and really who wouldn't want to eat them anyhow?

We did not do the Queen of Hearts or her famous croquets with flamingos on the mallets, but in spirit to the Queen, we did do a playing card cupcake. "Off with their heads!"

The Doormouse is another character from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. I wasn't as happy with how he came out as the others - we just did a small mouse in a teacup.