Spring Cupcakes

This is a fun spring project inspired by Hello Cupcake.  It's perfect for kids- even your little ones can do this with an adult handy to cut the marshmallow. It is an easy project, with simple ingredients. Make and frost your favorite cup cakes, and grab some marshmallows and sprinkles. With a scissor, slice large marshmallows horizontally in five slices and coat the sticky sides in the colored sugar. Place slices, slightly overlapping, around the edge of the cupcake. For the sunflowers, fill the center of the cupcake with dark brown jimmies.

 For the daisies we used Dots, cut in half horizontally and squished flat for the center. You can use any color combination of candies, sugars, and jimmies to make many different spring flowers!

The butterflies were a bit more complicated. They are also from Hello Cupcake and are made with candy melts. 

Draw an antenna and a pair wings on paper, place paper on a baking sheet and cover with baking parchment. Melt candy melts in plastic frosting bottles, or zip lock bags. On your parchment, first outline the wings in one color then fill the center with a contrasting color, rap the pan on a hard surface to smooth the candy melts, and using a tooth pick, drag and swirl some of the edge color with the center color. Let set until hardened.  Assemble your butterflies on top of your frosted cupcakes. Place wings in frosting at angles pipe some candy melt dots between them (or use round candy) for the body and add your antenna.

Sounds easy. It is if...your kitchen is warm enough so the candy melts stay liquid for a few minutes. Our kitchen was very cold the day we made these butterflies, and when the liquid candy melts hit the parchment on the cold cookie sheet they hardened almost immediately, and the whole thing became very frustrating. Our solution: once the wings were piped, we slid the pan in the a warm oven for a minute to soften the candy melts. Then proceed with rapping and swirling. Success!