Star of Bethlehem cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for our annual cousins' Christmas party and had high hopes they would turn out like the ones in Susannah Blake's book "Cupcakes" -- which contains some great ideas for amateur bakers, by the way.

But as the clock continued to tick ever faster and I realized I was going to be late for the party, it quickly became obvious that the frosting - a standard one made of icing sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice - required more patience and time that I had.

Rather than wait for the cupcakes to cool, I added a dollop of the icing on the cupcakes, and seconds later, the icing was quickly spreading of it's own accord. I had been aiming for only a small dollop in the centre of the cupcakes, but the too-hot icing began to drip.

I caught some of the drips, but I wish I had waited for the icing to harden a bit, and for the cupcakes to cool. The key thing to remember is to drop the dragees in the icing pretty much as soon as you spread it on the cupcake so that they will stick.

Funnily enough, the easiest part of decorating these cupcakes turned out to be the fondant stars, which I cut out of rolled fondant that I coloured myself.

After letting them dry at room temperature overnight, they held their shape quite nicely.

Be warned, fondant doesn't take kindly to the fridge so don't be tempted to stick them in there to harden faster. The cupcakes themselves were cappuccino cupcakes, which I've written about before.

Interesting factoid: Did you know that if you were to drop dragees on the ground, they bounce all over like bouncy balls? And this makes them impossible to find until weeks pass and you are on your knees cleaning the kitchen floor. But unless you have a high threshold of tolerance, I don't recommend you try this. It was a purely accidental discovery on my part.