Valentine's pictogram cupcakes

Now, this is probably one for Cake Wrecks but this idea was fueled by the fantastic authors of Hello Cupcake! The blog that goes with the book last week happened to feature some ideas for Valentine's pictograms - "I love you" and "Cutie pie".

I used the "I love you" idea to create my own and then I decided to make it more personal. So, just to explain the rest of the pictogram, my boyfriend is called Andy but I tend to call him Pandy because it rhymes and is the name of the kid's TV character. So, I create a Pan (check out my fried egg!) and a D.

Now, I needed to complete the set with something that ideally illiterates with "Pandy" and rhymes with "you". Starts with a P, rhymes with "you". Now what could that be...

Oh yeah, POO!

I love you, Pandy poo.

Circus cupcakes with Marshmallow frosting

Last week was a week of new recipes for me (more new recipes later). Firstly I did these vanilla cakes with Marshmallow frosting based on the "Almost-homemade vanilla buttercream" recipe from Hello Cupcake - I'm not sure why it is called buttercream when it is more about the marshmallow than the butter, but nevermind! P.S. This book is soooo inspiring.


I was attracted to this recipe because it uses Marshmallow Fluff, which isn't readily available here in the UK, but my local Powerplay have started to stock American sweets including Marshmallow Fluff in Raspberry, Blueberry and Original flavour. So, if I can master this recipe then I can hopefully, try a Raspberry version, yum, yum, yum!

Now, the recipe is a bit weird for me firstly because it is measured in "cups", wtf?! We don't measure things in cups in the UK, I've never heard of that as a measurement. But after some googling I worked out that 3 1/2 cups is about 805g and that is the second weird thing... 800 grams of frosting??! Wow, I'm frosting 12 cupcakes, not 1200!

So I made an eighth of the original recipe using half the jar of Marshmallow Fluff. I had used the first half in a batch of frosting that did NOT come out well, the frosting sank into the cakes and was an overall disaster. But this batch was great, after whipping the Fluff for quite a while it was nice and thick and was so white - perfect for adding colour if you choose to.

The theme was inspired by a circus party that was posted on Party Perfect so I used some spotty cases that I've had in my stash for a while and all of my sprinkles with a primary colour theme: chocolate beans, martha stewart jimmies in red and yellow, hundreds & thousands and sugar dots that my mum got for me on her trip to Germany.

Sesame Street cupcakes

Happy 40th birthday Sesame Street!

It was also my friend Laura's birthday this week and she loves Elmo so I figured that was definitely call for some Sesame Street cupcakes.

I stuck with vanilla cakes to keep things simple and made my favourite cream cheese frosting. I split the frosting and then set to work making two cupcakes for each character:

• Elmo: I used lots of red food colouring for Elmo and his eyes were made from a slice of (vegetarian) marshmallow with black writing icing for his pupils. An orange M&M made made the nose and I chopped a third of an oreo cookie (after you separate the two biscuits) for the mouth.
• Cookie Monster: I used bright blue frosting as the base, marshmallow slices for the eyes and black writing icing for the pupils (facing in opposite directions), no need for a nose or mouth, just a third of a Maryland cookie.
• Grover: I used the same blue frosting as I did for the Cookie Monster and again used marshmallow slices for the eyes and writing icing for the pupils. The nose was a pink Smartie / Chocolate Bean and a third of an Oreo cookie for the mouth. Grover is a little different in that he has a pink bottom lip so I used a little of the red frosting left over from Elmo to pipe along the edge of the Oreo mouth.
• Bert: Using yellow coloured frosting I tried not to coat the whole cupcake in frosting but create more of a oblong shape, less of a circle to achieve Bert's long face. Again, marshamallow slices for the eyes and I used black writing icing not only for the pupils but also for Bert's mono-brow, spiky hair and smile. Bert was finished off with an orange M&M for his nose.
• Ernie: Using mostly yellow frosting from Bert and a little red from Elmo I created orange frosting for Ernie's round face. Marshmallow slices for eyes, writing icing for pupils and hair, a red M&M made the nose and a third of an Oreo for the mouth.
• Oscar the grouch: Using the remainder of the yellow frosting from Bert and a dab of blue from the Cookie Monster I created a bright green for Oscar. Marshmallow slices for eyes, writing icing for the pupils and Oscar's squiggly mono-brow (make sure you make him look angry) and Oreo cookies for the mouth finished him off neatly!
• Big Bird: Although I didn't make any Big Bird cakes this is what I planned: yellow frosting for the cake, marshmallow slices for the eyes and black writing icing for his pupils. The beak could be made from one of those yellow banana sweets chopped in half - the first half for the upper beak, and the second for the lower. You could even pipe a little orange frosting for his tongue.
  

This blog post was brought to you by the letter C (for Cupcakes and Christina) and the number 12.