RECIPE: De Blob And Tetris Cupcakes

I modelled mine on the Japanese de Blobs.

You may or may not remember that I wrote an article for IGN AU and Kotaku AU the other day about a professor who claimed that violent videogames (“violent” being interpreted quite broadly as anything that involves destruction) cause people to be more aggressive.  Well, I have a new theory to throw into the mix. Videogame cupcakes make people more aggressive.

My goodness, I was one angry girl when I was baking those de Blob and Tetris cupcakes. They were the most frustrating things to make. In the time it took me to sculpt a de Blob, I had grown a luscious beard that reached the floor and, because I’m incredibly uncoordinated, I kept stuffing up and had to try again and again and again. All for the sake of a mother trucking cake.

Below is a recipe for the marshmallow decoration I made. You can use it on any cupcake — chocolate, vanilla, orange — and you can even cheat and bake those Betty Crocker-style “dick cake in a box” things, and then add the decoration on top. It’s not like anyone will actually care whether or not you baked it from scratch. If they ask, you can lie and they’ll never know. Conveniently, I didn’t document the cake-making/baking process this time, so you’ll never know whether or not I actually made these cakes from scratch! Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t; I’ll let that play with your mind for a bit while I show you how I made the marshmallow fondant.

Click through to see what I did…

STEP 1 GET INGREDIENTS AND STUFF

Perhaps I’m being a bit misleading with the image above. You see, I took that photo when I made my Lumines cupcakes and managed to document around 1/4 of the baking process before giving up. Most of the ingredients pictured above are for the actual cake itself. So, what you will actually need for a marshmallow fondant recipe is:

- a bowl that you can microwave without it going all wonky

- a spoon of sorts that you can stir things with

- a small bag of marshmallows, preferably white ones

- 60ml of water

- food colouring

- a bag of icing sugar — I can’t give you a precise measurement because there was a lot of trial-and-error on my end of things, so just buy a 500g or more bag to be safe

- a disposable glove (this is optional)

- a whole lot of patience, a stress ball, and some anger management classes (not optional)

STEP 2 MELT THE MARSHMALLOWS USING HOTNESS

Put the marshmallows and water in a bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. You really don’t need that many marshmallows. One bag goes a very long way. I probably only used 1/6th of the fondant I made.

Using your wooden spoon or equivalent, give the marshmallows a mix before microwaving for another 30 seconds. Your marshmallows should turn into a sugary and gross liquid, like this!

STEP 3 MAKE A SUGAR DOUGH BY ADDING MOAR SUGAAAAR

Marshmallow fondant is, more or less, marshmallows with icing sugar. So…it’s sugar with more sugar. Great! It’s decadent and induces diabetes, but it’s not going to kill you right away. It takes a few days for death to catch up with you. Anyway, this step is sticky (literally, LOLZ). Start adding icing sugar to the melted marshmallows and stir it in until you form a dough.

Mix, mix, mix!

Keep mixing! Your arm might get tired at this point because the mix is incredibly sticky. My weak little arms were crying for help.

It gets to a point when a spoon simply will not do and you will need to get a hand in there to knead it into a proper dough. I wore a glove for this because I am not kidding when I say that this stuff is sticky. You might want to rub a bit of butter or oil on the glove to stop it from sticking too much, or you can be a man daring and go gloveless. Whatever floats your boat.

Keep adding icing sugar if it’s still too sticky. Knead it until you form a dough that you feel comfortable with shaping into things. I know this is a vague description because some people will never feel comfortable about shaping anything. I guess you want to have something that’s softer than plastecine. Gosh, I’m still being so vague. Okay, picture a really soft butt cheek; now imagine you’re grabbing one. That’s the consistency we’re after here. Make your dough so that it’s like soft butt cheek.

When you’re done, wrap it in some cling-wrap and refrigerate it overnight, or for at least four hours.

STEP 4 ROLL IT OUT, YO!

After however many hours in the fridge, your sugar dough will be rock-solid. Microwave it for 60 seconds and then remove it from the cling wrap.

I’m going to make a red de Blob first, so break off a small bit of fondant, like so. Then, add some red food colouring.

Now knead, knead, knead! Keep adding food colouring until you get it to the desired redness. Your hand will stain unless you wear gloves but, provided that you work fast and wash them immediately after cooking, you should be fine. All the dye came off my hands straight away.

This is a really time-consuming process, but persevere with it because if you’ve gotten this far, you might as well just finish it off, yeah? Yeah. Now you can roll it out…

…and cut it up!

Now you can add the things.

And put the thing on the other thing. You know what I mean.

There you go! You did it! Well, actually, I did it. I made two of them, but they were so time-consuming that I ended up shaping the rest of the fondant into little squares and made some Tetris cupcakes instead. “Aww, but you should have just made heaps of de Blob cupcakes!” Yeah, I should have, but I didn’t. So how about you SUCK IT DOWN.

I think they turned out alright, especially since this is only the second time I’ve ever had fun with fondant. If anyone knows of any better/easier ways of making fondant or decorating cakes, please let me know. My way takes too long and makes me want to cry.

Now if you would excuse me, I think I need to curl into a ball under my desk and play some Jake Power: Soccer Star because that’s all my brain can handle at the moment.