What better way to celebrate your favorite team during football season than with hand piped royal icing football cupcake toppers?
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I made these football toppers for my nephew’s birthday party the exact same way I made these unicorn cupcake toppers. The biggest key to success is to allow yourself enough time for them to dry nice and hard.
How to make royal icing cupcake toppers:
Step one: find a pattern. Some people are super talented and can draw their own pattern (or pipe free-hand). I am not one of those people. I typically choose a pattern from a free clip art site. Choose a pattern that is very simple, it’s much harder to pipe than to draw and too many details just look messy.
Step 2: Print out the pattern so it’s about the size of the top of the cupcake. I usually use a cupcake wrapper to measure. I find it ok if the toppers are just a little bigger or just a little smaller than the cupcake.
Step 3: make and color your royal icing. Royal icing toppers use quite a bit of icing. I used a whole batch to make about 30 cupcake toppers. You want to keep your frosting at a thin piping consistency or thick flooding consistency. The wetter your frosting, the longer it takes to dry. Semi-sweet designs has a really nice post about royal icing consistency you should read if you’re unsure.
Step 4: lay out a long sheet of parchment or wax paper. Place your pattern underneath the parchment. Pipe the outline, fill in, and once the decoration is more dry, pipe the details like the numbers and the laces.
Step 5: wait 12-24 hours for the toppers to dry. Then gently peel them off the parchment paper and lay them on top of freshly frosted cupcakes.
They’re not dry! What do I do?!?
I ran into this issue with these very cupcakes. I only gave myself about 8 hours to allow the decorations to dry and they weren’t quite ready. What happens when they aren’t quite ready? They break, they smear, they are just generally a big fat mess.
What do you do? Put them in the freezer for no longer than 2 minutes. The freezer will actually cause condensation if you keep them there too long. But just for a couple minutes will allow them to chill enough for you to pull them off the wax paper and get them onto the cupcake without damaging them. Whew!
Royal Icing
Ingredients
- 10-12 tablespoons water
- 6 tablespoons meringue powder
- 8 cups powdered sugar 2 pound bag
Instructions
- If using a stand mixer, fit with paddle attachment.
- Put powdered sugar and meringue powder in bowl. Add 7 tablespoons water. Start mixing on LOW speed until all ingredients are combined and moistened. Scrape down the sides.
- Add 2 more tablespoons water and mix to combine. Scrape down the sides. Turn speed of mixer up to medium high. Beat for 7 minutes.
- Turn speed of mixer up to medium high. Beat for 7 minutes. Scrape down the sides. If the icing is too thick, add more water 1 tablespoon at a time and beat to combine. You can’t take the water out so don’t put too much in at a time.
Notes
If you looking for other football cupcake toppers, you might want to check out these easy football cupcake toppers made out of chocolate (and the strawberry rhubarb cupcakes that go with them are pretty good too)!
Did you make these football cupcake toppers? Tag me on Instagram @bakincareofbusiness so I can see what you made!
Happy Baking!
