Firetruck Cupcakes

A friend of mine asked me to bake cupcakes for her son's third birthday party and the theme was firetrucks.  I googled some images and found some adorable fondant firetrucks that I decided to use as inspiration.  I was a bit nervous to use the fondant since I'd only used it once before and didn't have the best results.

As my luck would have it, the two stores where I purchase my baking supplies were out of the pre-colored fondant.  I figured it couldn't be too hard to color it myself so I picked up some white and with the help of my sister, we created the three colors (in addition to the white) needed for the firetruck.  The process wasn't too hard, but it was a bit time consuming.  It took a couple of hours to cut out the different shapes for the truck.

I decided to bake a dozen chocolate and a dozen vanilla cupcakes.  I used my basic buttercream recipe.  I thought it would be fun to swirl yellow and red together to look like flames.  Unfortunately, I ran out of the red and yellow frosting so I used plain white for the last six cupcakes.  I sprinkled some red sanding sugar on them and I think they looked great!

For only the second time working with fondant, I think the firetrucks came out kinda cute.  Because I am lazy, I also decided to make stars with the number three on them.  Overall, I was pleased with how they looked and I think the birthday boy was happy too - He had one chocolate and one vanilla cupcake!