Grand Final cupcakes

So, I got invited to a friend's AFL Grand Final bbq. For those of you not from Australia, it's a huge sporting event. Not one I'm interested in, but an excuse to bake, nevertheless!

The two teams playing were Hawthorn and Freemantle, so I figured that it would be kinda fun to make the cakes in their colours.

I used a vanilla cake mix and used food dye to colour appropriately. The brown was done with cocoa (so it became chocolate) and for a bit of a mind melt, I flavoured the purple strawberry.

Getting ready for the big game!

In terms of decorating, I thought I'd disguise the colours in the cupcake. You bite into the cake, and that's the team that's going to win...or the team that you'll back...whatever. Either way, I needed something that was going to cover the entire cake.

I've got a nifty little tip that I've used to make Cookie Monster cupcakes...it makes the frosting look like hair or grass. So, we have grass on the top of the cupcake, but what else? How about a little footy? I wasn't sure what to use for a footy...I certainly wasn't going to buy a special lolly!

Luckily, being a chocaholic, it occurred to me that peanut m'n'ms look just like footballs. Hooray! So I separated all the red ones out of the pack (eating a few of the others at the same time) and I was ready to go.

Genius!

I made some vanilla frosting (with a hell of a lot of green food dye) and I was off! I have to admit, I really hate using the six-holed tip. It's bloody hard work to squeeze buttercream through it. In fact, I had a rather funny disaster, when after frosting the cupcakes, I squeezed a little too hard and the piping bag exploded, leaving me with a massive blob of frosting on my clothes. And one on the floor. Whoops!

Anyway, after frosting, I popped on a footy and they looked really sweet. Perfect for a bbq!

Go team!

Funnily enough, when all the cupcakes came out, everybody picked a Hawthorn one (purely by chance!) The Hawks ended up winning...which made the hosts very happy :)

Go Hawks!