Birthday cupcake and shoe

To celebrate a friend's birthday, I made this chocolate cupcake with raspberry buttercream frosting. It's a big cupcake--not as big as the giant cupcake I posted earlier this week, but bigger than your average, run-of-the-mill cupcake...probably meant to be more than one serving to someone besides me.

When I was thinking about what I could do to celebrate the birthday, I decided to make a high heeled shoe to go with the cake since my friend always looks great--she dresses well and she has some really incredible shoes. So the shoe is made out of gumpaste, rolled thin and put over forms and allowed to dry for about five days. In order to get the shiny finish on the shoe, I used a paintbrush to apply a 50/50 mixture of corn syrup and gin. (The alcohol makes the mixture thin enough to spread and then evaporates off as it dries.) I will be making more of these little sets for birthdays in the future...they are just the right size to celebrate with something special when a whole cake is overkill.