Trudie the Turtle

An exciting event happened recently, I got a turtle! Her name is Trudie and she's a beautiful aquatic turtle.

 

Meet the wonderful Trudie! 

In honor of this beauty I wanted to make turtle cupcakes. They were very easy to decorate and they look so cute. With these cupcakes I used the following...

Ingredients: 

1 package of Sara Lee's butter vanilla cake mix

1 package of icing

green food dye

chocolate sprinkles

Supplies: 

green cupcake liners   

round circle icing tip 

mixing bowls

I first mixed the cupcake batter and filled them a little less than half full, as usual. Mixed the icing with the green food dye, only a couple drops at first, and iced the cupcakes, so they had a light green background color. Then I mixed more green food dye into the icing, turns out you needs to mix a ton of green food dye, like I found out last time, to make a rich green color for the shell. I filled an icing bag and using a round icing tip I made a  swirl for the top of the turtle shell. 

I made little arms and legs and a round head. Using only two chocolate sprinkles for each cupcakes I used them for the eyes of the turtle! And viola, cute green turtle cupcakes. Very easy to make. 

Trudie even liked them!

A Happy Turtle and Happy Baking!

Spring is Finally Here

With spring right around the corner, I was eager to make some floral cupcakes. With this in mind, I was inspired by tons of cupcakes on the numerous baking blogs I follow to do something I hadn't seen anyone do before... decorate a trio of cupcakes to form a single long-leaf sunflower.

So the minute school was out for spring break and I had some free time on hands... I began my cupcake decorating project. For these cupcakes I used the following...

Ingredients:

1 package of Sara Lee's Vanilla Cake Mix

1 package of icing 

Plenty of food dye (colors used: red, blue, green, yellow)

brown sprinkles  

Supplies:

mixing bowls

cupcake liners

icing bags and tips

a platter to display

Since I am a beginning baker, I used Sara Lee's packaged cake mix for these cupcakes and I hope soon I can make my own batter (so stay tuned for yummy homemade recipes). For the time being I also used already prepared icing, which proved difficult to work with. The icing ended up being too creamy and difficult to form the petals of the sunflowers. I suggest making your own icing so you can always add more sugar to thicken the mix if you run into the same problem.

After mixing the cake mix and filling the cupcake liners a little less than half full, I put half of the icing in one bowl and mixed in three drops of red and two drops of blue food dye to make the pastel purple icing used as the background for a spring time look. I took another bowl and put a fourth of the icing in it and mixed roughly FORTY drops of green food dye. Everyone always says go easy on the food dye and while I fully support this cardinal rule of baking, this was not the case with the green icing. Don't go easy with the green food dye, go crazy with it. With the remaining icing I mixed in four drops of yellow food dye for the petals.

After the cupcakes cooled and the icing was prepared, I used a butter knife and distributed the purple icing as the background for the cupcakes.

Using the round circle icing tip, I made the leaves and stem of the sunflower, connecting two cupcakes vertically. I added a little grass at the end too. Using the star shaped icing tip, I dolloped the yellow icing so that the icing spiked, forming peaks, giving the petals a 3D look. Like I had mentioned before, the icing I used was way to creamy for forming peaks, it worked but just not as nicely as I would have wanted. In the end though, the sunflowers turned out great! 

I used some brown sprinkles around the middle of the cupcake to look like sunflower seeds for the finishing touch, and viola! 

Happy Springtime Everyone and Happy Baking!