Sugar Glitter Cupcakes

After sharing a post on Facebook detailing the procedure for creating edible 'glitter' from sugar I was immediately asked by a friend to try and create some Glitter Cupcakes for her absolutely adorable mums' upcoming surprise birthday party.  

So while experimenting in the kitchen with granulated sugar and a selection of colours from my food colour collection I thought in advance to take photos so that maybe I could do a little tutorial for you all in the future... and here it is...

It was pretty simple, hence so few photos! ;) 

I mixed granulated sugar with one colour and stirred... for quite a while, until all the colour was mixed properly... (I did the measurements by eye, I knew I wanted them bright so I was generous with the food colour).

This is how it was looking after only a bit of stirring... (I used my normal Sugarflair colour pastes as well as the slightly runnier Americolor gels, I diluted the Sugarflair colours with a few drops of vodka help them mix with the sugar).

 

 then they started looking like this after stirring for quite a while longer...

Then, once I had mixed enough colours to fill my big roasting pan I fashioned little 'boats' out of tin foil and popped them in a pre-heated oven at 175C (or 350F) for about 10 mins.  I gleaned that the idea of the oven bit is simply to dry the sugar out after being mixed with the colour paste, so if they came out of the oven a bit wet and steamy I simply popped them back in for a few mins until they looked drier...

 

Here are the selection of 'Glitters' that I created for Diane's surprise birthday party cupcakes...

And here are the finished cupcakes.  I must admit, it was a bit of a messy job, I opted for edible glue (something I wouldn't normally use at all) to try and stick the glitter on, one day I will try them again and hopefully create something that doesn't look like it was made by a 4 year old... they didn't according to my friends, but I do have a super critical eye...

I guess you can make up your own minds...