The penguin

I’m not a talented baker.  I’m not even really a very good baker.  I am however, an obsessive baker.  Once I start, I just can’t stop.  I have to get things right even if it means that I have to make the same chocolate cake over and over again until I get it to a texture and taste that I want.  However this isn’t about chocolate cakes (that will come later).  This is about Peso the penguin.

Peso peso peso.  Why did I make Peso?  Well my 4 year old was sharing a birthday party with one of her little friends.  As I was making a load of Hello Kitty cupcakes for my 4 year old (her favourite character) I felt it was only fair that I made cupcakes for the other little girl as well.  And she chose Peso!

Briefly, this is how I made them. (Ps. excuse the dodgy photos.  I was working late at night under dim kitchen lights).

First things first.  

Sugarpaste.  To buy or not to buy?  I didn’t buy.  I made.  Extra work, but bought ready-made  sugar paste, in my opinion, has a weird smell and aftertaste.  So I had to make my own.  From scratch.

After a long hard search through the internet, I found this recipe.  It’s a bit of work but so worth it!  I ended up with a nice big lump of off-white sugarpaste – roughly 2 kgs of it!  That’s a lot of sugar.

Next thing. 

Black sugarpaste

I tried to colour the off-white sugarpaste black but ended up with a big grey mess and sticky grey hands.  So I made chocolate sugarpaste – also from the same recipe.  I then mixed half of the chocolate sugarpaste with black ready-made sugarpaste that I bought.  This ended up a nice dark nearly black colour with a decent flavour.

Then the easy bit, I rolled the black sugarpaste, cut round circles using a cookie cutter and stretched the circles slightly so they became ovals.

Here’s the hard part.  I then found a Peso face on the internet, printed it and then traced it onto greaseproof paper and cut it out.  I manually cut out 16 (yes, sixteen!) faces…and 32 eyes…and 16 noses…and 16 hats…and rolled 32 eyeballs.

Once all of this was done, I put it all together with some sugar water. 

And voila, there you have it.  16 freaky little Peso faces staring at you.  Just pop them on a few cupcakes and you're ready for a party.