Gametime!

I made these cupcakes in honor of the first Steelers game of the season.  They're comprised of banana cake filled with caramel topped with mango chocolate ganache and fondant Steelers logos.  I even bought a pack of the Reynolds multi-colored cupcake liners just so I could harvest the yellow ones.  Black and gold, baby!

Total time = 5 hours: 1 hour for the cake, 3 hours to make the fondant logos, and 1 hour to fill, frost and assemble.  (The caramel filling and mango chocolate ganache were leftover from previous cupcake projects.)

This was my first time working with fondant, and I learned some valuable lessons:

1. Place fondant decorations on cupcakes immediately before serving.  I knew that water softens fondant, but it totally slipped my mind when I assembled the cupcakes.  The logos were little hard discs when I started placing them onto the cupcakes.  By the time I finished and grabbed my camera, the first few were starting to soften and droop around the shape of the frosting.  D'oh!  Also, fondant "sweats" if you refrigerate it and then bring it back to room temperature.  (I've been storing the cupcakes in the fridge and then letting them come to room temperature before eating them -- the fondant goes from dry and matte to shiny and wet.  Eww.)
2. Use powdered food coloring to dye fondant.  I used gels made by Wilton and for some reason I couldn't get the fondant red.  The color on the jar was "Christmas Red" but my fondant started out light orange and got brighter and brighter until it was practically neon orange.  It took about 40 minutes, 1/2 tsp of red gel, and a cup of powdered sugar to get a tangerine sized ball of fondant red.  So frustrating.  Luckily the blue and yellow were much easier.

Anyway, here's the result:
I used this banana cake recipe from Cassie of How to Eat a Cupcake, the mango chocolate ganache mentioned in this post, and Chockylit's caramel recipe with the ginger omitted.  Thanks to Amai for the awesome fondant cutter set that included the diamond!