Red Velvet cupcakes in support of All Blacks rugby

I recently outed myself as a closet rugby fan. I attended the first Lions test match her in my hometown of Whangarei and have been glued to the TV ever since. Tonight the Lions take on the Maori All Blacks. I'll be perched on the edge of the couch screaming at the TV as all good rugby supporters like to do.

I seemed a good day for some rugby cupcakes. I'd been wanting to try the new Whittakers Full Eighty chocolate bars. Which consequently are very nice. Using Rainbow Dust edible metallic lustre dusts, I trialed "metallic dark silver" left, "metallic light silver" (middle) and "starlight silver saturn" (right) - whilst the beauty of each colour is hard to portray in the photo, my favourite was the "silver saturn". I dusted the lustre powder straight on to the chocolate and on to grey fondant silver ferns, made using this mould

I Wanted a black cream cheese icing for my red velvet cupcakes, so I first made a chocolate cream cheese icing to which I added black progel food coloruing . I find a good dark cocoa such as this one makes a nice dark buttercream/icing meaning you need less black food colouring to go from dark chocolate brown to black 

Recipe

125 grams softened buter

125g room temp cream cheese

4 cups icing sugar

3 Tbsp cocoa powder

6 Tbsp water.

Beat together butter and cream cheese. Add. cocoa powder. Add 1 cup of icing sugar at a time and continue to beat. Add a little water after the addition of each cup of icing sugar.

If you do not want chocolate flavoured icing, omit cocoa powder and add a good squeeze of lemon juice instead.

Because I'm 99.9% sure the Maori All Black are going to come out on top It's black icing atop red cupcakes for me today

Sport Shirt Cookies - from Kiwicakes Test Kitchen

Our eldest just turned 6 and he is excited about his ripper rugby starting up again for the winter. We let the kids choose a theme for their birthdays and his was obvious (though at one stage there was discussion around a nuddy cake, go figure 6 year olds humour!)

Knowing it was going to be a busy time leading up to his little party, I chose to make the party favours 3 days in advance. I always try to give something homemade as a leaving gift and history has proven they are continually well-received!

I remembered Sandra making sleepover pyjama cookies (visit that blog post here) in the past and that inspired these rugby shirts.

To make these cookies you will need to mix up a batch of regular chocolate cookie dough, some homemade royal icing and have a sports jersey cookie cutter, sugar glue, black fondant, a piping bag and cellophane bags on hand.

I rolled out my cookie dough, cut rugby jersey shapes and baked them as normal. When cooled I brushed on some sugar glue to make the top surface tacky. I left a 2-3mm border around the sides un-glued as the fondant doesn't quite reach the cookie edge.

For my fondant I actually used a 50:50 mix of black fondant and chocolate brown fondant. I love the chocolate taste and the brown is deep enough to carry the colour from the black fondant and still create an overall jet black appearance. Just knead them together til combined. I rolled the fondant 3mm thick on a cornflour sprinkled board and used the same cutter to cut another 10 jersey shapes, which are simply placed on top of the tacky biscuits.

Then I made a quick royal icing by whisking together 1 egg white with 200g icing sugar and 1/2t lemon juice. I transferred the mix to a piping bag with a coupler inserted in it. ALBIE was using a tip#3 and the numeral 6 was using a tip #10. Alternatively you could snip 1mm off the end of the piping bag to write the name then snip the end off another 2mm higher up to pipe a fatter numeral.

The royal icing will need time to set and harden at room temperature before the bikkies can be packaged up and sealed for freshness. 

Then enjoy the looks of pure delight when these macho chocolatey delights are distributed!

Go The All Blacks - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Show your support for our national team by whipping these up on game day. I'm sure you will be popular! Tomorrow we play South Africa in Auckland.

The flag picks give height to your favourite everyday cupcake recipe and the black foil cases are both stylish and make for easy kitchen cleanup.  If you are a committed fan, or just want to go crazy, check out our full range of All Blacks party ware here for loads of inspiration.

There are matches against Argentina, Australia, France, England, Ireland and Japan coming up soon.  For a full list of the remaining 2013 All Blacks fixtures click here. 

And you can pick up a set of these Top 8 Rugby Team World Flag Cupcake Picks ahead of time to be really prepared!