Monster Cupcakes! For Julian's 8th birthday.

The cake is a basic vanilla cupcake from scratch (an adaptation of a recipe from Martha Stewart Kids, found online) and the icing is also vanilla-flavored (not spinach, in case you were wondering!) cream cheese and butter.

One could really go crazy here, but I tried to keep decorations as simple as possible:

--3 colors of gel-icing tubes (white, black, and red)

--candy eyes (found at Michaels Crafts, in the cake section

--red licorice laces

--M&Ms in white, black, yellow, and aqua (bulk section of the supermarket!)

--mini M&Ms

Julian got right into the decorating! I made some too... (with permission from the head artist!). They are sooo cute that I had to take pictures of them all...

I was going for scary, but this just turned out cute!

Big Grin monster (Julian)
Baby Vampire (me)
Zombie? Julian
Animalistic cyclops (me)
Evil vampire (me)
Triclops (me)
The inspiration cupcake (me)
Stalk-eyed monster (me)
Stabbed cupcake (Julian)
Green eyed horned monster (me)
Classic cyclops (Julian)
Things got a little crazy on the last cupcake (Julian)
Frog eating a fly off of his forehead (Julian)
Tri-eyed monster (Julian)
Happy polka dot monster (me)
Girl monster (me... made scarier when Julian tried to make her grin)
Drippy eyed monster (Julian)
Long-tongued alien (Julian)
Mess cupcake (Julian-- he claims this one for himself!)
Guess who? (David)
Cyclops with mono-antenna (Julian)
Injured monster (me)

Wedding DIY- Cupcakes

I decided cupcakes would be so much cuter, and cheaper, than a cake.

The cupcake stand is made out of foam core and decorated with tiny paper flowers.

The cupcakes were made a couple days in advance, and frozen (placed on the unheated, screened porch in January!) The night before we iced and decorated them.

We decorated them with hearts made out of rolled fondant (store bought). Two different size heart cookie cutters were used to cut out the hearts, and they were left on cookie sheets to harden overnight. They were brushed with pearl cake decorating powder mixed with a little water. The cupcakes were also sprinkled with white crystalized sugar and tiny metallic hearts that I found in the cake decorating section of the local craft store.

Plastic cupcake holders were essential-- we talked a local bakery into selling us a few.

Next time I use fondant as a decoration, I will put them on at the very last minute... probably the day of the event. They got a bit soggy and droopy overnight, and I spent a bunch of time propping them up with toothpicks.

The cupcakes were a big success... our guests loved them.

Cupcakes for Julian

I had a little too much fun with this. Julian's comment to me: "I wish they had all been spiders. They tasted better." Apparently the spiders were grape-flavored... who would have guessed?