Shark Fin Cupcakes

For those of you in the USA I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend. Up in Pennsylvania, we had a benefit pool party with a Shipwrecked theme and raised some money for a good cause, the Upper Delaware GLBT. 

Dr. B volunteered to give scuba lessons in the pool. I made a few desserts around the theme including these shark fin cupcakes and lots of wonderful people not only paid the entrance fee but donated food as well.

Because I was a co-organize of the benefit, time was short to be creative for dessert making. All those elaborate idea on the list kept getting struck and re-imagined. So I whipped up at batch of Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla butter cream, both recipes from Magnolia Bakery.

I tinted the buttercream blue. To make the shark fins I melted a bag of while candy melts with a third of a cup of black candy melts with roughly a heaping tablespoon of shortening in the micro. Mixing everything together yielded the sharks grey color for the fins.

I piped the mixture onto parchment paper the night before the benefit. Getting the shape right was trickier than I thought. Luckily I had the help of a weekend guest, a culinary school grad who is a brilliant baker/decorator. She got the shape right and I followed her lead.

When pulling the candy fins off the paper the next morning, they only had one smooth side. You can see what the other side looked like from the photo above of the fins piped on the paper. I thought this would be a problem but when all the cupcakes were arranged on the platter with the smooth side facing in one direction, they looked a lot better than I imagined.

This is a quick and easy way to make shark fin cupcakes that are sure to be a hit.