I made these triathlon themed brownie cupcakes for my daughter, Carissa's, 1st grade teacher. She participates in triathlons and had taken part in an Ironman Triathlon recently (wow), so we thought that she would enjoy this set of cupcakes. She mentioned on a 'favorites' sheet that she liked brownies, so we made brownie cupcakes for her instead of regular cupcakes.
To make these cupcakes I started by baking brownies in cupcake liners. When the brownie cupcakes were baked and completely cooled I used a large star tip to pipe chocolate buttercream icing on the tops of the brownies. Then I put the hand painted fondant pictures I had made in the icing to top the brownie cupcakes.
To make the fondant toppers I rolled out some fondant and lightly painted the basic lines of the pictures I would be drawing with peach food coloring. Then I went back and painted in all the details with the different colors of food coloring. For some of the thinner or smaller black details I used a food coloring marker. Then I used a small paring knife to cut around the pictures.
As I mentioned in the previous post, Star Wars Themed Teacher Appreciation Cupcakes, if I were doing these again, I would attach a lollipop stick or toothpicks to the backs of the toppers to make them more stable (and less 'fragile') on the top of the cupcake.
Carissa was very excited about giving the brownie cupcakes to her teacher, and her teacher really liked them! :)
