Sushi Cupcakes

Sunday Morning Baking: Sushi Cupcakes! Or maybe this is more of a petit four? Well, they are adorable, whatever they are.

I found some gorgeous coal black, coarse sanding sugar at my local baking supply store this weekend and I knew what I had to do... make sushi from cake!

Usually I would use fondant or fruit leather to make the nori but as soon as I saw this sugar, I knew had to test out its seaweed-replicating powers. The sugar grains have a really interesting shape, they are broader and flatter than other coarse sugars I have.

To make these I took a basic sheet cake and cut out the appropriate shapes with a knife and a small biscuit cutter. However, next time I attempt to do frosted nori I'll use a denser cake, perhaps a pound cake (maybe even brownies) as frosting nearly the entire surface of such tiny, fluffy nuggets of cake was not very easy.

Anyway, I made up some butter cream, divided it and tinted it dark green, red and reserved some white to do the rice. To make the nori, I coated the sides of the rolls in the dark green butter cream and then rolled them in my black sugar. The rice is created by frosting the roll with white butter cream and pressing it into a plate of white sprinkles. I made the flying fish roe in the same manner, with red nonpareils and red-orange butter cream.

The shrimp and fillings are made from tinted and painted fondant, coated with a little piping gel to make them look fresh and glossy.

I wouldn't try to make dozens of these, but they really required less effort than I expected.

I'm probably going to head back to the kitchen now and make some more sashimi out of fondant just for fun. I think I may need to go find a little dark green fruit leather to wrap up some tamago too...