White Chocolate Brushstroke Cupcakes Tutorial

Over the years I’ve learned that, aside from fondant, white chocolate is one of the best mediums for creating cake toppers. It’s great for making fun geometric shapes, 3D art (I hope to master the white chocolate sphere someday!), and one of my favorite techniques: painting with white chocolate to create brush strokes. It’s one of the easiest techniques ever, and when you get a little creative with your colors the results can be breathtaking. Let me show you how it’s done:

You will need:

• 1 cup (183g) white chocolate chips
• Food color gels of your choosing 
• A clean, dry paintbrush
• Parchment paper
• Baked and frosted cupcakes

Step 1: Temper Your Chocolate

Even though white chocolate isn’t a “true” chocolate (it’s made primarily of cocoa butter), it still needs to be tempered to keep it from getting flimsy and looking dull once it’s dry. To start, measure out one cup of white chocolate chips and pour them into a microwave safe bowl. Reserve ¼ of the chips (so in this case, ¼ cup) and set them aside. These reserved chips are what’s called a “seed” that will be mixed into the melted white chocolate to quickly decrease the overall temperature.

Microwave your white chocolate (minus the seed) in increments of 30 seconds, stirring after each interval, until the chips are melted. In my case, it only took 2 intervals to get the white chocolate nice and melted. Then stir in the seed until those chips are melted and you have uniform consistency.

Step 2: Give It Some Color

When you’ve got a nice smooth finish, it’s time to color – my favorite part. I separated my melted white chocolate into three bowls and started adding some Wilton Color gel until I achieved these three colors.

I’ll be honest, I usually start with an idea of what colors I want and then fly by the seat of my pants until I get there. There’s no real method to my coloring madness. For the seafoam, I used a little Sky Blue, for the peach, a little Pink, and for the purple, a combination of Sky Blue and Rose. When these colors mixed with the natural creamish yellow tone of the white chocolate, they ended up being perfect.

Step 3: Paint Your White Chocolate Brushstrokes

Now for the fun. Grab your paint brush, dip it into the white chocolate, and start brushstroking the white chocolate onto a sheet of parchment paper. A single brushstroke will usually do, as long as you’ve got enough white chocolate on the brush.

The brushstrokes dry in about 20 minutes at room temp and are ready to use! If you live in a particularly humid environment, you can pop your brushstrokes into the fridge for about 10 minutes and they’ll firm right up.

Step 4: Assemble Your Designs

After your white chocolate brushstrokes are nice and dry, all that’s left to do is add them on top of some frosted cupcakes. For these, I piped a swirl of buttercream onto each cupcake using Wilton Tip 1M, then simply stuck a few brushstrokes into the swirl.

These white chocolate brushstrokes would also look incredible on top of a cake, or stuck to the side of a cake using some buttercream as adhesive. I have yet to try the brushstroke technique on a cake, but I’ve definitely been Pinning a few inspiring looks and hope to try it someday. Follow me on Pinterest to see some of the looks I’m loving!