Le Poisson D'avril

These fish cupcakes were featured in Cupcakes, Cookies & Pies, Oh, My! and I've been wanting to try them for some time. Since today is poisson d'avril - or April Fish (our April Fool's Day), I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to use my fish.

I used a simple Devil's Food box mix (with a few added ingredients to improve the taste. For the decorating, I used buttercream frosting tinted with either orange or green to make the fish. I had originally planned to make twelve fish, but I ate a few too many M&Ms the day before...so I only had enough for eight. Fortunately, the cupcakes didn't pose much of a challenge. I added the M&Ms to make the scales, and then flattened gumdrops for the fins. (I was rather surprised at how easy it was to flatten the gumdrops - though I did have to use toothpicks to support the rear fin.) Sadly, I felt my fish were a little lacking when compared to those in the book - though I'm assuming the authors are slightly more professional than me.)

Easter Chicks

With Easter just around the corner, I wanted to take a spring-themed treat for my co-workers. Although I was hoping to make these cute lamb cookies, I had to settle for these chick cupcakes since I could not find a lamb cookie cutter. (However, the chick cupcakes were something I'd seen on Pinterest long ago - so I had wanted to make them.

Fortunately, the original online posting actually gave very detailed directions on how to make these (even including the tip numbers used to make the feet, beaks, and wings.) I started with a simple layer of yellow buttercream frosting, which I then dipped in yellow sugar. After adding two chocolate chips for the eyes, I used tip #102 to make the wings. Sadly, the buttercream frosting didn't stick well to the sugar-coated topping. If I was making these cupcakes over again, I would definitely add the wings before coating the cupcake in sugar! After adding the wings, I made some orange frosting and added the beak and feet with tip #2 (though they too had trouble sticking to the sugar.)

Cake #24: Dirt Cake for Kids

This afternoon, I had my first "Kids in the Kitchen" for the children at my library. I had the children make very basic dirt cakes with fun gummi worms. Each child was given a cupcake (which I had baked the night before) and they began by frosting them with store-bought chocolate frosting. Then, I gave each child a plastic bag with 2 Oreo cookies; by squeezing and pounding the bags, the children made their dark soil. (The kids really enjoyed getting to smash the crap out of some Oreos!)

We made two holes in the cupcake tops by inserting a straw and pulling it back out (the kids also enjoyed sucking the cake and frosting from inside the straw.) Finally, we added two gummi worms to the holes to finish off the garden look...though I'm not sure how many worms there are in the Arizona desert!

The kids greatly enjoyed making (and eating) their little dirt cupcakes. The only thing that I didn't like was the speed at which the kids worked. From start to finish, it only took about 15 minutes to complete their cupcakes. Guess they'll just have to make two cupcakes next month!

Cake #7: A Delicious Bouquet

I saw the idea for a pot full of cupcake flowers on a number of cake websites, but when I stumbled across this YouTube video explaining how to make these simple flowers, I just knew I had to find an excuse to make them! This week, one of my coworkers is being transferred to better position, so I thought this bouquet would be a nice send-off.

For this bouquet, I used 9 French Vanilla cupcakes decorated as a mixture of carnations and begonias. For the yellow begonias, I merely used the #104 tip to make two simple rows of petals with a smaller center petal. The pink carnations were made in much the same way except that I switched to the #103 tip and made the petals with several quick back-n-forth wavy movements.

To construct the bouquet, I used a styrofoam ball that was about 2" smaller than my pot and then used toothpicks to hold the cupcakes in place; unfortunately, the toothpicks weren't exactly the strongest supports. I can't express the importance of having a styrofoam ball that is at least two inches smaller than your pot in diameter. When I first tried assembling my arrangement, I used a smaller metal bucket, which was almost the same size as the styrofoam, and lead to disasterous results! The cupcakes definitely need the added support of from the pot's rim, which sticks out almost an inch on all sides.

Fortunately, the flower pot did hold the cupcakes, and my coworker really seemed to enjoy it!