Penguin Cupcakes!

My sweet daughter turned 4 in January.  We had a penguin party to celebrate!  Instead of cake we had cupcakes.  These little cupcakes were so cute and fairly easy to assemble.  I made a white cupcake and frosted the top with vanilla icing as the base.  For the penguins I used:

 ...Oreos, chocolate chips and Sunkist fruit snacks.  I opened the little packages of fruit snacks and took out all the orange ones.  My kids snacked on the rest.

 I carefully opened up the Oreos, putting aside the cookie only part for later.  The icing part became the face base.

I cut the fruit snacks into 3 pieces each.  One piece became the beak.  The eyes were chocolate chips.
I carefully broke the cookie piece of the oreo in 2, these became the wings.  The trickiest part was making sure the pieces stayed sticking up.  I used a knife to cut a slit to stick the pieces in, this worked.  The remaining cut fruit snack pieces became the feet.  I placed all the cupcakes on a foil lined tray and then sprinkled powdered sugar over everything to make it look like snow.  Very cute and the kids loved them!

Diet Coke Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

I found these over at Emily Bites who found the frosting over at Gina's Skinny Recipes.  If you haven't discovered their sites yet, they are well worth the look.  Tasty recipes, all with the nutritional information and Weight Watchers Points Plus information on them.   I had heard about the idea of using a cake mix and pop before, but I was skeptical.  I decided the low points plus value (4) was worth the effort. I'm glad I did, they were yummy!

Diet Coke Cupcakes
Ingredients:
1 box of cake mix
1 can of diet pop
2 egg whites

Directions:
1.    Preheat oven per directions on cake mix box
2.    Line cupcake pan with 24 cupcake liners or use cooking spray to lightly coat 24 spots
3.    Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and beat together until thoroughly mixed. Pour mixture into cupcake liners.
4.    Bake according to directions on cake mix box. Let cool completely before frosting.

Yields 24 servings. WW P+: 3 per serving

*for one more P+ you can push a Hershey's Kiss into each cupcake for an extra surprise :)

Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:
8 oz light cream cheese
1 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
1.    Combine all ingredients in a bowl and beat with an  electric mixer until smooth

Yields 24 servings. WW P+: 1 per serving

They were a hit with my family, don't you think?

Snowman Cupcakes

Have I mentioned yet my new found love of Pinterest? Of course, if you are crafty you probably already know about it and are more than slightly hooked on it. Well, my daughter turns 2 tomorrow. We aren't having her party until next weekend, but I couldn't let the day pass without something special. I decided to make cupcakes for her to take to daycare and share with the kids there. I searched 'cupcakes' on Pinterest and my goodness there are some amazing cupcakes out there! Wow! I needed something fairly simple though and I saw these. Aren't they cute? My daughter loves snowmen so this is perfect. The eyes and mouth are upside down chocolate chips and the nose are cut up pieces of fruit gummies - so simple.

Sheep Cupcakes

Aren't these cute! This was my craft idea for last night's messy church at my church. Messy church is a once a month event that we have for families. Each "Messy"
involves a craft, an interactive lesson and dinner for families. Last night's theme was "The Good Shepherd knows his sheep". I knew we hadn't had a food craft in a while and have never done cupcakes, so I googled sheep cupcakes to see what I could find. I found the idea for these on the Food Network's Site. Their cupcakes are slightly different than the ones we did. You can see theirs here. We couldn't quite find all of the decorating ingredients that they used (the candy eyes and the gumdrop noses) so we improvised and used mini M&M's. I also didn't make their cupcake recipe so I don't know what that part tastes like. I did make their icing, but had to abandon it as it was too thick and tearing the cupcakes apart. Fortunately, I discovered this as I was making the sample 45 minutes before the event started and had time to head out to the store and pick up some ready made. The ready made worked well and was easy for the kids to use. The kids and parents really loved this craft. And that is what I would recommend it for, a craft. It is very time consuming - unless you are the kind of person who loves to spend all afternoon decorating cupcakes like this.

How to make:

Make the cupcakes first, try out the foodnetwork.com recipe, your favorite recipe or cheat like me and use a box mix - let cupcakes cool.

For decorating:
-frosting
-marshmallows (1 per cupcake)
-mini marshmallows (24-30 per cupcake)
-mini M&M's (3 per cupcake)
-purple mini jellybeans (4 per cupcake)
-pink mini jellybeans (2 per cupcake)
-licorice shoelaces (cut into 1cm and 3cm pieces - 1 each per cupcake)

Frost the cupcake. Stick a large marshmallow on top to be the sheep's body. Use the frosting like glue for the rest of the stick on ingredients, putting the frosting on it first and then sticking on. Start with the Mini M&M's for eyes and nose. Use the 1 cm licorice shoelace for the mouth. Start at the bottom and work your way up and around with the mini marshmallows to make the sheep's wool. Use the 4 purple jellybeans for feet and the pink ones for ears. Take the 3cm licorice shoelace, curl it and stick it on for a tail. So cute!