Make Some Themed Cupcakes This Summer With Wilton!

Wilton, well known for making cake, cookie, and candy (the 3 Cs, lol) tools and supplies, has some new products out for making themed cupcakes, cookies, and other goodies.

Wilton’s new lines include a Galaxy and Space theme, a Sea Life theme, and a Folklore and Floral theme. Each line includes a bunch of fun new tools to use and decorations to apply, such as cupcake liners, cookie cutters, candy/baking molds, fondant and gum paste molds, sprinkles, icing decorations, colored frosting, and more.

The Galaxy theme includes themed cupcake liners, a planet and star sprinkles set, a planet and star silicone fondant and gum paste mold, a galaxy cookie cutter set, and planet, moon, and star royal icing decorations.

The Sea Life theme includes sea-inspired cupcake liners, animals and stars sprinkle mix, a starfish and seashell silicone baking and candy mold, under the sea cookie cutters, and crab, seashell, seahorse, and shark royal icing decorations.

The Folklore and Floral theme includes butterfly and flower cupcake liners, a butterfly and flower sprinkles set, flower cookie cutters, and a dragonfly, butterfly, and flower silicone candy mold.

Wilton recently sent me a lidded cupcake baking pan along with a selection of galaxy- and space-themed items to play around with. My family and I made cupcakes out of my mom’s chocolate cake recipe, and we went to town with decorations. Here’s how it went.

First, I learned that my mom’s chocolate cake recipe doesn’t work very well as cupcakes. But that’s another matter.

Second, we learned that some of the Wilton’s products were really fabulous and others were less fabulous, partly depending on how strong your teeth are.

Here are my family’s attempts at cake decorating!

First, the pros:

• The squeezy frosting they sent was a little soft at summer-room-temperature, but when slightly chilled it works great. The tubes come with both round tip and star tip built right in, so it’s pretty easy to change around. The frosting lovers in my house also enjoyed the flavor (mmm, blue!) and sweetness of it.
• The Galaxy sprinkles are pretty great, especially the colored sugar, metallic balls, and the jimmies.
• The Edible Glitter Stars added lots of fun without adding any real substance (sometimes a plus!).
• If you could spray the metallic spray just right, it had a lovely effect.
• Though we didn’t have any gum paste or fondant to try out in the mold, the mold is really sturdy and would be fun to use in any number of contexts, including with modeling chocolate.
• The cupcake pan is non-stick and does a great job releasing any batter that gets baked on. The accompanying lid is a handy thing for potlucks and parties.

Now, the less-than-great:

• Though the cupcake papers do their job, once you bake in them, you can’t see the space-y imagery, even after you peel them off, except for any parts of the paper that weren’t touching cake. They might work better with a white or yellow cake, but I’m not sure.
• When you spray the metallic spray, a lot comes out at once. The nozzle is kind of all or nothing. The instructions suggest holding the bottle six inches away from your cake, but I’d recommend farther, unless you want to erase all color underneath.
• The larger sprinkles (more like small candies) and the royal icing decorations were quite hard. I felt like I was going to break my teeth on them. Perhaps if we lived somewhere more humid, it wouldn’t be as much of an issue? They’re great for theming, but I skipped eating most of them.

The theming of these new Wilton products is a lot of fun, though, and would be great to have for a kid’s birthday party (or even a grown-up’s). If people don’t like the hard candies on top of their cupcakes, they can always pick those off. Wilton makes good quality stuff, so I encourage you to check out their offerings, on their website, on Amazon, or at your local craft store.

Note: I received samples for review purposes.