Owl Cupcakes

Need something for a Halloween party for those little stinkers? Well here is a cute idea. I made these for my granddaughter’s birthday party as she was into owls at the time.

Again, this comes from my favorite cupcake cookbook, Hello, Cupcake! by Karen Track & Alan Richardson.

The only thing I can say is plan to spend a lot of time creating these. There is a trick in separating the Oreo cookie, you must twist the cookie very slow—as slow as you possibly can and then you’ll have better luck at keeping the icing on one side of the cookie (which you need for the eyes).

What’s all on the face? Oreo cookies—just one side with the icing and on top of that a Junior Mint. The beak is a piece of candy—a banana runt.

And what do you do with that other half of the Oreo cookie with no icing? You cut it in half, well that's what it said. But I cut off more in the middle, so that the owl's ears would be smaller. You could probably go smaller than what I did. Those are then covered with (chocolate) icing.

Hope you owl have a Happy Halloween!

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

Now this didn’t come from my favorite cupcake cookbook, Hello, Cupcakes! like all my other cupcakes. My best friend gave me this silicone ice cream cone cupcake mold.

Susan handed me the mold and said, “I thought you’d like this to make ice cream cone cupcakes for the grandkids.”

Susan’s thoughtful like that.

For Lily, Lucas and Jack’s birthday—since their birthdays are days apart—I decided I would make them instead of the traditional birthday cake.

I thought if I filled the cake batter to the top of the mold, it would round over like a normal cupcake would do, but even fuller. Boy was I wrong. They spilled over, batter landing on the oven racks, in the bottom of my spotless (not) oven. The cupcakes ended up flat on top.

I wondered what I’d do to make the tops rounded and then I remembered the trick from, ta-da, Hello, Cupcakes! I took miniature marshmallows (coated with icing so they’d stick together) and placed them on top of the cupcake. I covered the entire marshmallow blob with icing, added sprinkles and whoo-hoo, ice cream cone cupcakes! Only they wouldn’t stand up on their own—too top heavy. I found some clear glasses to place them in. The grandkids seemed to love them. But then what’s not to love?

Garden Cupcakes

By now, if you’ve been following this blog, you know I like the cookbook, Hello, Cupcakes! by Karen Track & Alan Richardson.

I belong to the St. Louis Gateway Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society (NARGS). I had the annual planning meeting at my house a few times. I wanted to make a little treat and thought these garden cupcakes would be a hit.

Just like the Doggie Cupcakes that had multiple dog breeds, the garden cupcakes had each row of cupcakes a different design. They were vegetables. Since our club is about rocks and plants, I thought the shovel and seeds would work better. You can find chocolate rocks at specialty stores and had I been thinking, I would have used those instead of the chocolate covered sunflower seeds. The chocolate rocks would have looked more like boulders next to my little shovels, but then again some of us have unearthed rocks that were bigger than our little shovels could handle.

The dirt on the cupcakes were crushed up chocolate wafers. The shovels were pretzel sticks and chewing gum.

After working hard in the yard, a garden cupcake is a nice reward. (And I didn’t even try and make all that rhyme!)

I dig rocks… and cupcakes!

Doggie Cupcakes

If you really want to be creative—and use a lot of time doing so—try making these doggie cupcakes. This came from the cookbook, Hello, Cupcakes! by Karen Track & Alan Richardson. They have some of the cutest and most clever ideas on cupcakes.

I made these doggie cupcakes for my granddaughter, Logan’s birthday one year. You were supposed to make each dog a different breed. HA. Making the same breed for all cupcakes proved challenging enough. I picked what I thought would be the easiest. Not so sure about that.

When my granddaughter first saw the doggie cupcakes, she wanted to know if they were elephants.

“What? Elephants? Do you see trunks on those heads?”

“No.”

“Come again.”

“Oh... doggies.”

Woof, that’s better.

The ears are tootsie rolls—rolled out (after warmed a slight bit in the microwave) then shaped. The eyes and nose are black jelly beans. The tongue is a strawberry starburst—kneaded like silly putty, then shaped.

The cookbook called for a chocolate icing, but my chocolate icing was a lot darker than the ears and well, I wanted it to match. I took some white icing and mixed it with the chocolate until I got the desired result.

Who says I just sit around and eat cupcakes… errr… I mean bon-bons?

Spahetti Cupcakes

You all remember me talking about Bunco in one of my previous sweet treats (Hot Fudge Cake), well when it’s your turn to host Bunco (everyone takes a turn), you’re in charge of food and drinks and prizes. One time I made lasagna and then had spaghetti cupcakes for dessert. Sounds kind of weird until you sink your teeth into these cupcakes.

I got the idea from the book Hello, Cupcake! If you like to have fun creating desserts, this book is the one to get for all kinds of crazy ideas on making cupcakes. Allow yourself a lot of time to decorate—this isn’t for the faint of heart—but if you follow the directions, you should be able to master them for the most part.

Making the cupcakes them selves are easy. I think they have a recipe in the book, but I use a boxed cake mix. This saves a little bit of time. You buy whatever kind of icing you want also or you could mix up a batch of your favorite. If you have ziplock or plastic bags (or if you’re a real pro and have a pastry bag, that works too). You fill the icing in the bag, snip off the corner and squeeze a bunch of squirrely lines all over the cup cakes. Top it with a round chocolate candy that is covered in strawberry jam.

There are other cupcakes that I have made from this book (to be posted later). There you go Sioux—the mystery is solved about what Linda was talking about with my cupcakes.