cotton candy | Bake No Prisoners

Being the Science nerd that I am, I love Tom Lehrer. If you have never heard of him, and many people haven’t, he is a genius mathematician, scientist, and song writer. Every year, during our Chemistry unit, I challenge my students to memorize his now legendary song, “The Elements”, where he sings the names of most of the chemical elements to the tune of the”Major-General’s Song” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. If they can do it, then they win a cupcake. Last year, my students won these Pink Lemonade cupcakes. This year, they voted for these Cotton Candy cupcakes.

These cupcakes are super easy and will take you very little time to make. All you need is your favorite vanilla cupcake recipe or vanilla cake box mix, cotton candy flavoring oil (you can get it here), and fresh cotton candy. Use your flavoring oils very sparingly. A little goes a long way and you don’t want to over do it with your cupcakes. Honestly, they are very similar to the HP Honeydukes cupcakes I made awhile back, but I left out the cotton candy spinning sugar because I felt it didn’t need it. It give the cakes a more subtle taste and lighter feel.

Once I have everything mixed together for my cupcakes, then I add my cotton candy flavoring oil or I add it when I add my vanilla.

I also add a few drops to my favorite butter cream frosting too!

I break off little pieces of cotton candy right before I plan on serving the cupcakes. If you wait too long, then the cotton candy will melt into your frosting. It will make a very artsy swirl into your frosting, but it won’t look, or taste, as great.

**A big thanks to fan, Whitney, for sending me the adorable cupcake dome! It was the perfect way to showcase these cupcakes!

I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine’s Day last week! What did you guys do?

Did anyone have something special planned?

A trip, maybe?

Every year, the Hubster makes cheese fondue at home for me because I don’t like to go out to dinner too often, especially on holidays. He makes the best fondue you guys!! We dip apples, bread, and veg until our tummies are about to bust and then we find room for dessert.

This year, I thought I would try and spice things up with this neon pink and green, cotton candy ribbon cake. It is seven layers of cotton candy goodness, with neon pink ribbon frosting from top to bottom. First rule of thumb when decorating a ribbon cake is that this is totally easier than you think it is going to be. I want to take you guys through it, step-by-step, just to prove to you how simple this cake was to decorate.

First, take your favorite cake recipe and make 2 8 in. rounds. In this case, I made one electric pink and the other neon green. You can use the basic vanilla cake recipe I have posted before and just half the vanilla with your favorite flavoring. Or in my case, I used the cotton candy flavoring oil at Layer Cake Shop. Use any flavoring oil very sparingly, a few drops is perfect.

Once completely cool (I store mine in the refrigerator for an hour or so) level each cake and then slice each cake in thirds. You can use a cake leveler if you want, but for this cake, I just eyeballed it. You can tell my layers aren’t exactly perfect, but that’s ok with me. Frost in between each layer with your favorite buttercream, starting and ending with a pink layer.

Once you have layered and assembled your cake, crumb coat your cake and place back into the fridge for an hour or even overnight. Crumb coating makes it a lot easier to frost a cake because once refrigerated, you don’t have to worry about getting crumbs in your frosting. It also aids in keeping your frosting straight and level. I normally put mine in the fridge overnight because I just don’t have the time to bake, crumb coat, and frost a cake in an average day.

I took the last green layer and frosted it for the Hubster to snack on or bring to the office.

Sometimes our furry house elves get a little bite too!

Take your pastry bag and attach your coupler and tip 103 or any rose tip you have and place the bag into a tall glass. To give it more of a ribbon candy look, I dripped my electric pink food coloring down the sides of the bag before placing the frosting inside. That way, when I started to pipe the frosting, my ribbons would come out looking like this.

You want to make sure you are holding your pastry bag vertically against the side of the cake, starting at the bottom, and move in a horizontal 1 inch direction, back and forth. You want to try to keep your lines straight, but it is totally ok if you start to slant like me. You can make it up on the next line of ribbons. Remember, practice makes perfect.

See! They are much straighter now from this view. Go around the entire cake making 1 inch ribbons from bottom to top.

Finally, I used a star tip to pipe a small ring of stars around the top to hide any mistakes and to bring together the ribbons with the top of the cake.