Black Sesame Cupcakes and Pistachio Cupcakes 

Its a couple of my friends birthdays this week so I wanted to surprise them with some cute cupcakes. Plus it gave me an excuse to make some more figurines with fondant.  One of my friends loves pistachio so I made half batch of pistachio and the other half black sesame for a more asian flavor. Black sesame is big in Asian desserts and has a nutty flavor to it. My favorite is black sesame rice balls in sweet soup and black sesame ice cream.

I roasted the black sesame to bring out the flavor and made a vanilla bean base with black sesame mixed into it, with black sesame buttercream.  Then I crushed up pistachio and made a vanilla bean base, with pistachio mixed into it, with pistachio buttercream. This time I added a very small bit of green food coloring to give it some more color. Both flavors used European butter.

For the figurines, I made a different cupcake topper for each friend... race car driver, roses and makeup. It was a lot of fun making these, its just like playdough!