Cupcake Decorating

On Friday, a bunch of my friends and I got together and decorated cupcakes! It was so much fun and we all had a blast! I created three special cupcakes, and all of the ideas were taken from the "Hello Cupcake" line of books. If you haven't checked out these books, you definitely should. They are chock-full of absolutely amazing, creative, and adorable ideas for decorating all kinds of themed cupcakes. Anyways, here is what I created (I also frosted a few more, but they were nothing special).

First up is my fish cupcake. I first frosted a plain vanilla cupcake with purple frosting. Then, I lined skittles up in three rows for the scales and stuck a dot candy in the end for a tail. Finally, I used a candy eye and a skittle for the face. So simple and fun!

 

Next, for this sunflower cupcake, I frosted another vanilla cupcake with green icing and placed an oreo on top. Then, using yellow frosting, I piped the petals onto the oreo. For a finishing touch, I added a red skittle with chocolate frosting dots as a ladybug. To pipe the petals, I filled a small plastic bag with the frosting. Then, I snipped a tiny hole in the corner of the bag and used that for the piping. The best part? You can just throw the bag away when you're done and there's no mess or cleanup!

Finally, here is my sleepover girl cupcake! I frosted a vanilla cupcake with green icing and layed down two mini vanilla wafers (one for the body under the blanket and one I frosted white for the pillow). Then, I put another vanilla wafer on top of the pillow for the girl's face. The blanket is made out of a red and a yellow starburst that I microved for 30 seconds and molded into the desired shape. The top of the blanket is an airhead candy strip. To finish this cupcake, I used candy eyes and piped the nose, mouth, and hair.

I hope this post has inspired you to decorate your own cupcakes! Check out My Crafting Bee and Create and Bake, which also have great posts on this cupcake decorating event!

Cupcake Pen Review

One of my new favorite tools for baking is called a cupcake pen. It's basically a long tube with a spout at the top and a removable bottom. To use it, you cover the top (it comes with a cover) and fill the tube from the bottom with cupcake batter. When you're filling cupcake liners, you just squeeze the tube and the batter comes right out into the pan, mess-free. It actually works really well! 

My cupcake pen filled with batter from mint-chocolate cupcakes

I bought mine at HomeGoods, but you can also pick it up here at amazon.

Mint-Chocolate Cupcakes

Today I made mint-chocolate cupcakes from this recipe. Instead of the mint buttercream frosting, I used canned Betty Crocker icing and just added peppermint extract. I sprinkled the frosted cupcakes with mint-chocolate chips. For me, the recipe made 12 mini cupcakes, 9 regular cupcakes, and one mini cake (which I forgot to take a picture of). They turned out pretty good!

Ingredients

Mixing the Batter

Into the Oven

 

Fresh out of the Oven

Cooling

Finished! (As you can see, I didn't spend much time decorating!)

*Have a great week!*