It's Groundhog Day on February 2nd and if you can't make your way over to Punxsutawney, then I've got you covered with some fun crafts and activities to do at home, including these:
So pop on over to Rusty and Rosy where I'm sharing lots of Groundhog Day crafts and activities for kids.
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These fun game day cupcakes are simple to decorate and if you are hosting a game day party, then whip a few up for the kids.
What you need:
If you only have a small number of cupcakes to decorate and don't want to deal with messy bags of icing, then these icing tubes are perfect. At a rough guess you could probably decorate 8-10 cupcakes with one tube of kelly green, depending on how much 'grass' you pipe on.
Here are the steps you will take to decorate your cupcakes.
Step 1
Using the chocolate decorating icing and the No.21 (star) tip begin at one side of the cupcake and make a swirl that becomes wider in the center and tapers back in at the other side. In full disclosure I used regular chocolate frosting for this. I knew I had a chocolate tube, however after attaching the tip I quickly realized that it was almost empty, but thankfully had a tub of chocolate icing in the refrigerator that I could use instead.
Step 2
Using the white decorating icing and the No.5 (small circle) tip make a short line down the center of the chocolate football and then a few cross marks over the top.
Step 3
Using the kelly green decorating icing and the No.233 (grass) tip pipe on small sections of grass around the football.
Done!
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Remember when I made the ice cream cake for Jay's birthday? Well there was a little leftover cake mix so I filled a few silicone baking cups and made cupcakes to decorate with the little ones.
We also had leftover candy from decorating the gingerbread house, and with a constant supply of icing in our refrigerator I decided we should try decorating our cupcakes with holly leaves. I found a large box of Christmas cookie cutters in the garage that I'd purchased after last Christmas on clearance and by chance there was a holly leaf cutter in there so I popped out to the craft store and purchased a sheet of Wilton edible decorating paper. I thought I would be able to us cut the paper with the cookie cutter, but that wasn't possible so I used my X-ACTO knife to trace around the cookie cutter to make the holly leaves instead.
You can find the cupcake recipe here.
UPDATE: The things you learn. If you leave the sheet of edible paper out of the package for a while it does soften so you will be able to use the cookie cutter. To make the leaves stand up place them lower toward the front of the icing and press the base into the icing slightly.
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Each year I try to make a new, and wonderful Autumn or Thanksgiving themed cupcake. There's been these turkey cupcakes, autumn leaf cupcakes, these colorful turkey cupcakes, and these adorable Pilgrim cupcakes.
This year as I was flicking through the Klutz Kids Cooking book looking for fun recipes to make with the kids I came across Frosted Chocolate Conecakes. And the lightbulb lit up.
I've never made conecakes before. Sure I've made cupcakes in the shape of cones, but never made cupcakes inside cones, although I have seen it done and they look like so much fun.
Aren't they just adorable?
My daughter loved helping me with these. While I heated the chocolate mixture on the stove, she took care of the dry ingredients and then the blending. Then a little teamwork (and taste-testing of candy) took care of the decorating which was really easy to do.
Here is how to make the conecakes. This recipe is from Klutz Kids Cooking.
Ingredients:
In addition to the above ingredients which cover what you need to make the basic Frosted Chocolate Conecakes in the book, here is what you will need to turn these into adorable turkeys.
To make:
1. Preheat your oven to 350F. In the mixing bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.
Note: Marisol absolutely LOVED that the Kids Cooking book came with a set of measuring spoons, now she has a set of her very own.
2. In the saucepan, mix together butter (or margarine), water and cocoa powder. Stir all the time. When the butter is completely melted, remove from heat and combine with the flour mixture in the bowl.
3. Use a big spoon and mix till everything is well blended.
4. Add the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla, then beat again for another minute or two. Note: The mixing by hand was a little tough for her so we broke out the beater.
5. Put the ice cream cones into a muffin tin, or a big baking pan (we used a muffin tin). Pour the cake mixture into the ice cream cones. Fill to about an inch from the top. Bake them right away so the cones don't get soggy.
Once the cupcakes are cooled you can started decorating.
Because I used round waffle cups instead of flat-bottom cones, I placed my turkey conecakes into silicone baking cups to keep them upright for serving.
Disclosure: This post has been compensated in connection with my appointment as 'Klutz Crew' Brand Ambassador.
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You don't need to be an expert baker to make something that kids (and adults) will love. Sometimes the simplest ideas have the biggest impact.
The kids had a monster bash at school this week for Halloween. There were games, food, a haunted trail, costumes, and of course a cake walk. Last year I contributed monster cakes and pumpkin cake pops for the cake walk. This year I made 8 of these fun skeleton cupcakes.
I haven't blogged about this yet (it's on the list), but last weekend I attended the SoCal Social. It was a fantastic day and I promise to share more about it later. We had a little break late in the afternoon before we had to meet for dinner, so a group of us wandered into the Heavenly Hostess to have a little look around. The shop is amazing, there are loads of gift ideas, fun kitchen gadgets, and of course aprons galore.
One of the many items I purchased was a box of Spooky Skeleton and Chair Cupcake Holders by Meri Meri. Check out their website, you will love it.
The chairs came flat packed, but they took no time at all to assemble, and then the skeleton needed to be tied on with a ribbon. The kit came with the cupcake cases too, so I baked chocolate cupcakes in each.
To top them off, I mixed a little Wilton orange icing gel into white icing, and using a large star tip in a cake decorating bag I created the swirled icing on top of each cupcake. We found packets of jumbo skull sprinkles at Michael's and added a few onto each cupcake.
The hands of the skeleton helped to hold the cupcake in place on the chair.
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I recently made these Hello Kitty Cupcakes for a special little girl who was turning 6. Being that it was my first time making them there was a little trial and error involved so I thought I should probably share the step-by-step instructions for anyone else wanting to make them too.
I left making these cupcakes until the last minute (of course) so didn't have time to traipse from store-to-store looking for a small Hello Kitty cookie cutter. Instead I used what I had on hand, which happened to be a teddy bear cookie cutter.
What you need:
Note: All of the items above (aside from the cupcakes of course) can be purchased at Michael's.
Spoon about 2 cups of white icing into a bowl. Add the rose icing color and combine, adding just a little a time until the desired shade is reached.
Pop the star tip inside the piping bag snipping off the point of the bag so that the tip pokes through. Fill the bag about 3/4's full with the pink icing. Starting in the center of each cupcake make a spiral of icing.
Roll out the white fondant and using the teddy bear cookie cutter cut out enough teddy bear heads for each cupcake, plus an extra one to experiment on.
Roll out the red fondant and using the flower cutter, cut out enough flowers for each cupcake too. Set these aside to harden a little.
Use a knife or other sharp item (I find that X-ACTO knives work really well for cutting fondant) to round the bottom of the head and trim the ears.
With the yellow sparkle gel make the nose. Don't make a circle, but drag it just a little to make it more oval.
Using the black sparkle gel carefully add the round eyes.
Dip a paint brush in water and sweep a little water over the back of the red fondant flower. Attach it to the head by the right ear. Allow it to set. Add a spot of yellow sparkle gel to the center of the flower.
Lastly, using the black food writer pen add whiskers to your kitty.
Place each Hello Kitty topper onto the pink iced cupcakes pressing down ever so lightly.
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