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Hello and welcome to Cupcake Addiction's Lightning McQueen Cars Cupcake Tutorial where I'll be
showing you how to make this great little Lightning McQueen cupcake, the perfect accompaniment
to our Tow Mater cupcake and perfect for the Cars fan in your life.
Tools and equipment that we will be using today:
I've got my Lightning McQueen printable cupcake wrapper. Now I have made and designed these
for you guys and these are available for download. I will leave a link to them in the description
box below. I've printed mine out on a 210 gsm card, so quite a thick sort of a card
stock. And I've just lined mine with a little bit of a wax paper and sticky taped it at
both ends. Now this is just because on these cupcake wrappers, you do tend to get... When
the frosting's actually touching the cupcake wrapper, you tend to get a little bit of,
I guess, a little bit a run from the oils and the butters in your buttercream frosting,
going down along this cupcake liner. So for this cupcake, I would definitely suggest lining
them with a wax paper, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are. If you don't,
you will end up with sort of a dark spot just around the edges of the wrapper and it takes
away from the look of the cupcake a little bit.
I've got some sticky tape. I've got my cupcake here ready to ice.
I've got some of our perfectly pipeable buttercream frosting that I've tinted red today. I will
leave a link in the description box below to the recipe to that frosting if you would
like it. I've got some little white sprinkles or white
nonpareils, they're called. I've got a knife.
Some melted dark chocolate. A little bit of just tap water.
I've got 3 white chocolate melts or white candy melts.
And I've got a skewer. So let's get started.
Now the first thing that we we're going to do is we're going to fit our cupcake wrapper
to the cupcake. I've designed this as a bit of a one-size-fits-all so it will -- it should
-- fit cupcakes from larger ones all the way down to smaller ones. You'll find mine or
some of the smaller ones, you'll find that you might have a little bit of overlap, just
snip that off if you find you got a little bit of overlap. And you should be able to
make a bit pretty much any size of cupcake that you're baking. And I'm just going to...I'm
just going to sticky tape that at the back there, so just a little bit of tape.
Now make sure that you keep an eye on where the front of your Lightning McQueen is, obviously
he's little headlights and his smiley face. You want to take your knife and before we
get into the frosting, it's just going to get a little bit messy. You just want to take
your 3 candy melts. Now I've picked a couple there that are about the same size. And this
one here, I just want to cut just the top, I guess, quarter or just under a quarter off
with my knife, so that's going to be our little [spoiler]. And we're going to stick it in
this way. So what you really want is just a bit of a flat top to give it a bit of a
flat edge at the top there. So now you want to take your knife and just
dip it into the buttercream frosting. And I always use the back of my knife. So you'll
see there I'm not using the rounded edge. I'm using the back edge. And we're just going
to spoon some of that off. Now I'm trying not to get it over the sides
of the cupcake wrapper. And if you do happen to get any frosting on your hands, give them
a wash straight away because any of the oils from the buttercream are going to mark those
cupcakes liners. And you want to keep them as neat as possible. So I'm just using my
knife just back and forward, back and forward so that it's got a nice, even, I guess, distribution.
I'm making just a bit of a mound there. Now I'm going to just wipe my knife off in
a little tea towel. And I'm just going to -- right around the outside, wiping in between
-- give us a really nice flash and neat finish. Beautiful. Now you can see there, we've got
quite a nice and neat little mound on our cupcake. Make sure that you do keep an eye
on where the front of your cupcake is. There's nothing worse than a cupcake like this than
realizing that you've got his eyes above one of his wheels, instead of above his nice smile.
So from the front there, you just want to scrape back just a little bit. You can see
there, I'm just scraping back that frosting a little bit. Keep it still nice and flask
at the front there. But we're just going to scrape it back and give us a little bit of
a, I guess, a gradient for our eyes to sit on. Alright, so what you should have there
is quite a low front, a nice gradient, and then your frosting should be quite a bit fatter
and thicker at the back there. So you want to take your 2 white candy melts
or your 2 white chocolate melts and you want to stick one down and then the second. And
you want to overlap the second just a little bit, so something like this. Not looking very
Lightning McQueen-y just yet, I know. So now, I'm going to turn it around to face
me because that's going to be the easiest way to do it. Make sure that your 2 eyes are
nice and even. And take a bit more of that frosting and just
build up that front, so we scrape it back quite a bit. I'm just going to put a bit more
of that frosting on the front there and I'm going to... As I work it back on to the cupcake,
I'm also working it across just the bottom quarter of that candy melt.
So the Cars guys, their eyes are actually not round. They're square like windshield
so we're using round candy melts but we're going to square them off so that they still
have that windshield-y kind of a look. Beautiful! Alright, so you can see there, we've squared
off the bottom half nicely. Just take your knife again and just pat it around. And you
do want to make sure you've got quite a nice little gradient at the front there because
he's a sport car with the aerodynamics to be right on this little guy.
Now you want to leave those eyes sort of slanting back there a bit. So you can see there they're
slanting back quite a bit. And I'm just going to take some of these frosting and I'm just
going to scoop it over the front, and once again, we're going to give it that little
bit of an eyelid. One eyelid is always bigger than the other. This one here is the slightly
smaller one and the other side we'll do a little bit thicker and a little bit bigger.
So I'm looking at that and I still think they're a bit too even. I want this eye here to be
just a little bit more pronounced in the eyelid. So I'm just going to push that down and make
that one a little bit thicker. If you love this tutorial, make sure that
you head on over to our channel My Cupcake Addiction. Hit the Subscribe button if you
like what you see. We've got lots and lots of great tutorials for kids and adults, cupcakes
and cakepops. And all sorts of cake decorating. On these sides, just take your frosting ever
so slightly over the side of that candy melt. Once again, it's just to blend those in and
to remove any of that round kind of a side, rounded look. Perfect.
Now I'm just going to wipe off my knife and try to keep that as clean as possible.
Now at the back here, you want to take your little spoiler and you're going to push it
in, so just pushing it into the frosting there a little bit so that it's sticking out quite
pronounced. And I'm going to use the back of my knife again, always the back of my knife.
And I'm just going to scrape down and as I scrape down, I'm coming up on that spoiler.
It is going to push down a little bit so be very gentle with it. You can see there, just
covering it up, cover over the backs of that white chocolate. Don't worry too much about
the underside. It's not going to be see really at all. So worry first about covering it and
about getting that nice neat finish. So I'm going to clear off my knife. I'm just going
to smooth everything down -- smoothing down the sides, smoothing down the back across
those eyelids. And as I'm smoothing that back, I'm just grading it down a little bit, keeping
with that sleek sports car-y type look. And as a very last thing with that back there,
I'm just going to use my knife and just prop that spoiler right back up. You can push it
down a little bit more if you feel like it's a little bit flimsy. And I'm going to support
it with my hand and just take off a little bit off that extra frosting just so that it's
not too heavy. Perfect. Neaten it off on the back. You've got your little spoiler.
So finally for our little Lightning McQueen, we're going to do our eye detail. We're just
going to take that skewer. You're also going to take your melted dark chocolate and the
little tiny white sprinkles and your water. So you want to give your chocolate a little
stir and make sure that it's as fluid as possible. And you want to turn him back towards you.
And I like to just put 2 little dots of dark brown chocolate in the center of the eyes,
sort of down here at the bottom -- so 1. And I tend to go across both of the eyes. I'm
not sure why, just personal preference. Beautiful. Now taking the other end of your skewer, dip
it in some of that water, so just dampen it off, and dip it into those little white sprinkles.
You'll pick up quite a few of those little sprinkles. So I put 2 there now. Just touch
one sprinkle on to that chocolate there and it will stick, and on the other side, the
other sprinkle. Use the end of your stick just to pat it down. And if you've got any
little, I supposed, little tops of the dollops on there, you can just use that skewer just
to neaten those off and to move any little pointy bits.
So in a nutshell, there you have your gorgeous and relatively easy little Lightning McQueen
cupcake, the perfect accompaniment to the Tow Mater cupcake, the perfect perfect cupcake
for the Cars fan in your house. As always, thank you very much for watching.