Another unusual request from Gia resulted in these fluffy white iced cupcakes with their Ming vases.  I am not sure if anyone has had a request for a Ming Dynasty Cupcake before, but Gia had a Ming Dynasty function and asked me to do cupcakes with the same theme.  My research at first was way off track as I didn’t think that the pictures of the Ming vases that Gia sent me would be possible to make and I wanted to do ‘noodle’ cupcakes instead.  Left with no option but to try the vases I made 4 different shaped white sugar paste vases.  I used silicone stamps with small flower designs and painted the stamps with edible blue food colouring before stamping them onto the vases.  This was not as easy as stamping onto a flat smooth surface and I had to press the stamp to the shape of each vase and wait for that facet of the vase to dry before continuing around each vase.  The result was these fairly dainty Ming vases on each cupcake with their individual blue flower pattern.  To all the Ming Dynasty purists out their I apologize that the patterns do not follow the beautiful uniformity of the traditional Ming vases….but then the cupcakes were really tasty to make up for that!