Fondant Leaf Cupcake Toppers
One of my favorite ways to decorate a cupcake is just to add a cute little cupcake topper. They just add a little extra something to an otherwise plain cupcake.
Oh, and did I mention they were easy to make? Well, they are.
These Fall leaf cupcake toppers are made from fondant, which is a great medium to use for cupcake toppers. Making fondant shapes is just as easy as rolling and cutting out cookie dough. Or you can shape it like you would clay.
If you want to make your Fall leaf cupcake toppers stand out even more, add a little gold to the top. That will really get people’s attention!
How to Make Them
Of course Fall leaves aren’t just one solid color, so to make the fondant Fall leaf cupcake toppers marbled and multicolored, dye 3-4 balls of fondant in your favorite Fall shades.
I recommend using food-safe gloves when kneading the food coloring into the fondant, as this part can get messy.
Once each ball of fondant it evenly colored, roll the ball out into a rope, then twist and roll them together until you have a single ball with all the colors marbled together.
Roll out the fondant with a fondant roller or normal rolling pin until it’s about 1/8” inch thick. Then cut them out with leaf-shaped cutters.
I used these leaf pie crust cutters that also emboss the top of the fondant.
If you want to add an extra something-something to your little leaf cupcake toppers, I highly recommend gold leaf. It just makes something relatively plain that much more extravagant.
To adhere it to the fondant, brush the fondant leaf with a bit of water, then use a brush to pick up the gold leaf and stick it to the fondant.
The gold leaf will want to stick to just about anything, so don’t touch it too much or it will end up all over your hands or counter tops (which may not be a bad thing).
Finally, if you want your Fall leaf cupcake toppers to have a bit more shape, let them dry over some wrinkled foil.
Fold or pinch the foil to form a few ridges, then lay the fondant leaves over the ridges.
It will take the fondant about a hour to dry completely. If you don’t have that kind of time, the fondant is pliable for a while, so you can bend or shape it yourself when you put it on the cupcake.
Which means the only thing left to do is to put it on a cupcake!
I added these to the top of my chocolate cupcakes frosted with chocolate buttercream frosting. I love the pop of color onto of a completely brown cupcake! Perfect for Fall.
And don’t worry, these are 100% edible. The fondant is totally edible, even if it’s not everyone’s favorite, as is the gold leaf (make sure to buy the edible kind).
But another thing I love about cupcake toppers is that they can totally be removed for those that don’t like fondant or don’t want to ruin your beautiful work.
Recipes and Tools
These Fall leaf cupcake toppers can go on top of any flavor of cupcake you want! They would be great on top of a pumpkin cupcake, or even just a plain vanilla cupcake.
Your next question is what frosting to put on top.
I have a few combinations that I recommend:
To make the actual cupcake toppers, you will need a few things:
Gel food coloring in your favorite Fall colors (yellow, orange, red, maroon, etc.)
Gold leaf (optional)
Paint brushes (optional)
And that’s it! Have fun topping your cupcakes!
