The cupcakes that you are about to see are inspired by history. The term 'Marie Antoinette cake' is used to describe pretty, dainty and quite regal-looking cakes. The name comes from the luxurious lifestyle that Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, led (until she was arrested and imprisoned during the French Revolution). They are also inspired by the gorgeous cakes from the 2006 film Marie Antoinette, directed by Sophia Coppola.
As this is a History blog, I will be talking about Marie Antoinette for a bit. However, if you're more interested in the baking and what the finished product looks like, feel free to scroll past my ramblings.
Marie Antoinette
Although she was the wife of the French King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette was actually Austrian. She was the fifteenth child of the Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa (a formidable woman in her own right) and the Holy Roman Emperor, Francis I, in 1755. After France's defeat in the Seven Years War, she was betrothed to Louis, heir to the French throne, in 1763 to preserve the Franco-Austrian alliance against Britain. They were married in a grand ceremony in 1770. Four years later, Louis XV died Marie Antoinette's husband became Louis XVI of France.
The royal couple were complete opposites: Marie Antoinette loved to party and socialise with other courtiers, whereas her husband preferred to sit by the fireplace reading, avoiding social situations wherever possible. Marie Antoinette was known for her lavish lifestyle and extravagant tastes. There was an economic and financial crisis in France during this period, and the dissatisfied people of France dubbed their queen "Madame Deficit". A particular source of anger for the peasantry was a game that the Queen loved to play with her ladies: she had a fake farm built and she and her friends used to dress up as shepherdesses. Marie Antoinette also brought shame upon the royal bedchamber by allegedly having an affair with a Swedish count, Axel von Fersen. During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette's name would be further brought into disrepute by radical revolutionaries like Hébert and Marat, who argued that she committed incest with her son, the future Louis XVII.
During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette's reputation continued to diminish. Her evident hatred of the Revolution was, understandably, unpopular. She was a strong-willed Queen- more ardent than her husband in some respects- and it was said that she constantly tried to persuade Louis to halt the Revolution and revert back to the absolute monarchy that had existed for centuries before in France. Marie Antoinette was supposedly the orchestrator of the Flight to Varennes in 1791, a failed attempt by the royal family to escape Paris so that they could reassert their authority. This event caused the King to lose almost any remaining popularity that he had. The constitutional monarchists were losing power and influence as republicans, like Robespierre, rose to prominence.
When war broke out between France and most of the rest of Europe in 1792, the monarchy's fate was sealed: the disastrous military situation led to people calling for the removal of the monarchy. After an attack on the Tuileries Palace in September, exactly that happened. Marie Antoinette and Louis were accused of sending French battle plans to the Austrians and Prussians. Louis was tried and guillotined in January 1793, and Marie Antoinette followed him in October of the same year.
You can read more about Marie Antoinette here, here and here.
Even though Marie Antoinette never actually said it, "Let them eat cake!"
So let's start at the most obvious place: making the cakes themselves.
Basically, number 1 rule of baking, chuck everything into a bowl...
And whisk it all together! Then artfully put enough mixture in the cupcake cases. Now, I was a bit of a wally and forgot to take pictures of the unbaked cupcakes. Anyway, then they went into the oven and came out looking like this:
I certainly wasn't expecting them to rise that much! As you can see from the tray, I'm quite a messy baker.
So whilst they cooled down, I got to work on making the decorations. I should point out here that I was inspired by this Pinterest post and wanted to put my own spin on these gorgeous Marie Antoinette cakes. I started by rolling out some icing...
Unfortunately, the icing that I used wasn't very good quality (poor student problems!) but, no matter. It served well enough. I had 12 cupcakes, so I cut out 12 circles to coat each cake with.
Once all the cakes had cooled down, it was time to attach the tops! I quickly made a bit of icing and added a blob to each cake...
And then placed each circle on top of the cupcake.
Then it was time for the fun, artistic bit! I had five different types of decorations.
The first used seven of these larger silver balls.
I dipped each ball into the icing and arranged them on top of the cupcake in a sort of flower shape.
Voilà!
Next was probably the most time consuming. I started by icing the vague outline of a heart.
If you're following this for yourself, don't worry if your heart isn't perfect. As you can see, mine isn't either! It can be tweaked and covered up later. I then took some of the much smaller, Ivory coloured pearls and placed them along the outline, like so:
Magnifique!
Next, I used some very pretty little decorations that I picked up from Tesco to create almost a stack of flowers! I started with just one...
And then built up around it!
If you want to, you can add an additional sugar flower on top of the ring so that a centre flower is visible, like this:
Très beaux!
The next one was a little bit fiddly. I won't show you all the steps as I followed this video tutorial to make a white fondant rose, which I then secured on top of the cupcake with a dab or two of icing.
Je l'adore!
The final two are pretty similar to the heart. As these are called Marie Antoinette cupcakes, I felt that it would be criminal not to give her some credit for them. So I iced her initials...
And covered them in sugar sprinkles!
Parfait!
And that's that! All five decorations showcased for you. These cupcakes took ages to make (I was working for about an hour and a half on the decorations alone!) but I think that it was well worth it. They're cute and dainty, and I love making them. Maybe I'll try them again another day when I have better baking tools and supplies. Maybe then they'll look even more sophisti-cake-d. Get it? Maybe I should stop and just show you a picture of the finished product.
Délicieux!
So there we have it, our first bake done! These cakes were a lot of fun to make and they taste absolutely gorgeous. All the time and effort paid off.
I hope that you enjoyed this post. I really appreciate any comments or suggestions that you may have, including for future bakes! Next week, I'll be using a recipe lifted directly from history. Just a little teaser: it's a 19th-century classic.
Until next week,
Eleanor
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