birthday cupcake towers

Our version of Hello, Cupcake's birthday cupcake towers:

delusions of grandeur part 4: cartoon portrait cupcakes

I won't lie: I've been a bit overwhelmed. The past couple of weeks have been an absolute marathon of projects. Not only was I competing in So You Think You're Crafty?, but I've also been making a ton of stuff for my kiddo's birthday and trying to keep up with book covers at work. And so, last night, with the party over and the party mess carted from the community center back to our living room and kitchen, I went to bed at 10:30 pm for the first time in months.

But let's back up for a minute:

First, I was eliminated from the competition last week, with my upcycled Sunburst Mirror project. Now, I don't really feel like my project deserved to do as poorly as it did, but admittedly, I was ready for competition to be over (so I could focus on birthday stuff). So when the other competitors ratcheted up their voter drives on the last day (don't ask me how), I maintained radio silence and decided to let the chips fall where they may. And fall they did.

And so I worked on robot decorations and cakes and giant crepe paper chandeliers and . . . well, let's just say there are a ton of party posts in our future, readers.

Now, my kiddo's party was all about robots, but he also has a thing for cake lately. He can't get enough of the duck cupcakes on the cover of What's New, Cupcake, for example. So we had to make a batch of cupcakes for our monthly play group last week.

After carefully studying all of the cupcakes in Hello, Cupcake, my kiddo kept coming back to the funny face cupcakes. When I asked if he wanted our cakes to look like him, I got an emphatic, "Yes!"

We used the recipe in the book to doctor a cake mix using buttermilk and eggs, then tinted cream cheese frosting and used a mix of candies for the faces (he picked green shoelace candy for the mouths).

Finally, to cartoon-ify his crazy hair, I filled a Ziploc bag with a mixture of white chocolate and butterscotch chips + two drops of yellow food coloring and melted them together. Then I snipped a corner and squirted out some wild hair squiggles onto some parchment paper. When they'd hardened, I cut slits into the cake and poked in the hair.

Ta-da! Pretty quick and easy. And he was one happy kid, looking at all those little cartoony hims.

Anyway, I like to do a little warm-up cake project before doing a big all-day cake (like last year, when I made the rainbow cupcakes before the Zelda cake) and these guys fit the bill. I'll be posting the robot cake soon . . . it was a little more time-consuming than these cuppies, but you might like it anyway. :)

Thanks for reading!


p.s. you can make these photos larger by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that! clever you.

rainbow cupcakes

Prior to The Real Deal (my kiddo's crazy birthday cake), I played around with this cupcake design to build my confidence a bit.

The result:




And not that you need the play-by-play (this one's pretty self explanatory), but here are a few shots in-process for you.

Frost the cuppies in a pastel-y turquoise blue frosting (I think I'll dip-ice them next time, for a smoother, more uniform top).




Using a piping bag, add a fluffy cloud of white frosting to either side of the cupcake top.




Cut a strip of this Air Heads Xtremes Rainbow Sour candy into two pieces. Each piece will be the rainbow on one cake. (I found this specific candy at Target in the dollar section at the front of the store.)




The rainbow candy strips have a tendency to list to one side when warm; I think refrigeration prior to and following cupcake assembly might help them remain upright. Something else to try next time!




This is a cute, easy project for little kids to help with, too! Older kids can probably even handle piping the fluffy clouds. Enjoy!




(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)


Linking Up To:


I Should Be Mopping the Floor