Tagged: cupcakes

Daintiest Butterfly Cupcakes

daintybutterfly2daintybutterfly3 daintybutterfly

My kiddo’s birthday is coming up and I’m all about special birthdays. The one thing she asked for was a butterfly cupcakes for her class. I’d done the Hello, Cupcake butterflies before for her first birthday but wanted to try out a new technique. This one was super challenging as the wings kept breaking, but I finally managed to get them done. I present the daintiest butterfly cupcakes I’ve ever done.

They ended up looking gourmet, but I kid you not, that’s Pillsbury Funfetti cake there (from a box). So yellowish cake with some sprinkles in it and plain ol’ vanilla frosting. The butterflies were done with this technique with melting candy wafers. They turned out lovely but really, I should’ve practiced more. Some tricks and tips for these cupcakes:

  • Pipe enough on the outlines so that they don’t break at the edges and thin on the inside so that they make the lacy effect. It takes some playing around and careful hands.
  • As soon as you’re done piping and you are folding the wings together, make sure you aren’t pushing down hard to get the mirror impression (for the other side of the dainty wings). I got a bit of a technique down by doing half the wings, folding them, flipping them to the other side and just lightly tapping on all parts of the wings so that they stuck to the other side of the wax paper (and then opening them, as the tutorial goes).
  • I let the wings set three ways: Open air, in the refrigerator, and in the freezer. The freezer worked best. Since the wings were so thin, sometimes they wouldn’t set correctly on the counter. In the fridge they took a bit of time (and I was in a hurry) so I put them in the freezer and that seemed to work best.
  • It also helped to peel them in the freezer (me standing outside an open freezer door, holding the butterflies in the freezer).
  • Food tweezers! Again, so thin, these butterflies were melting at the touch of my hand… so to set them in, I used food tweezers/tongs. Much easier.
  • I think next time, I’ll probably try the dual color ones or perhaps adding non-pareils for a more delicate touch.

Today I used:

A My Little Pony Birthday

My kiddos have birthdays at the beginning and at the end of the summer. For one birthday, the kiddo was in school. For the other birthday, our family will be away. So we decided to pick a day in the summer and make it a double birthday bash πŸ™‚ It’s actually one of my “off” years as I usually do birthdays up big. This year it’s at a bouncy house type place, so they’re taking care of the entertainment, the food, and the clean up while I take care of the party favors and the cupcakes. The girls are really into My Little Pony (which I have LOVED since they first came out in the ’80s when I was 5) so they wanted a MLP themed event. I didn’t do decorations but I did match the cupcakes and favors to the theme. MLP FTW!

The K-Kiddo (1st grade kiddo? Hmmm…) loves Rarity and the Preschool Kiddo loves Rainbow Dash (I, myself, love Twilight Sparkle and Doctor Whooves, but I digress). So I made them each a special cupcake with their respective ponies. I had originally planned on making 50 with the ponies on them (25 Rarity/25 Rainbow Dash) but that nonesense was soon dashed when it took me over an hour to make each pony head… so I compromised and made the other cupcakes with each pony’s cutie mark. And here they are! The toppers are fondant and the cake itself was funfetti white cake with vanilla frosting.

MLP

I wanted to go minimal on party favors this year so I designed a little coloring book for the party (a “Pony Journal”) and threw in a small box of crayons. I also made these little pony bead bracelets that change color in the sun to go along with the theme of ” MLP: Friendship is Magic.” Β Here are the front and back covers of the Pony Journal:

coloringbookfront
coloringbookback

Here is how the bracelet changes color in the sun:
bracelet

Seriously love the bracelets. More than the kids do!


Today I used:

Today, we graduated Kindergarten

gradcakes

I say “we” because it was a journey fraught with ups and downs, but a good experience for all nonetheless. We couldn’t have asked for a better K teacher than Ms. R and we will miss her. They held the celebration today along with the awards assembly. I brought these for my big Kindergarten graduate πŸ™‚ I totally got them off Pinterest, I won’t lie. The hat is made from a mini- Reeses cup and a Ghiradelli square; the button is a mini-M&M and the tassel is part of a sour belt! All glued together with some extra melting wafers I had. I didn’t eat one but they looked yum!

Bake Sale Cupcakes and a special Birthday Cupcake :)

Today, my group of friends put on a bake sale. It’s something we do every year to raise money for our Relay for Life team. I volunteered to make mini cupcakes and made these little owly guys to tempt some kiddies πŸ˜‰

owls

Yesterday was also my friend Alisa’s (from Sweet Party Treats) birthday and I knew I’d see her at the bake sale today. She’s a big fan of Hello Kitty and I wanted to make her a little something special πŸ™‚ I think she liked it! The topper’s made completely out of fondant and the cake is triple chocolate with chocolate frosting.
hellokittycupcake