Cupcakes!

So far, I've focused this blog solely on the bento style meals I make for my daughters. But, my daughter recently celebrated her 8th birthday and I thought I'd share with you some of the treats I made to celebrate.

She had 2 parties with 2 different themes. Her "family" party was Harry Potter themed. I was stumped on what to do for her cake. Since she's an 8 year old girl, I didn't want to do anything too goth or dark, like making Hogwarts castle. My sister suggested owl cupcakes. For those of you who don't know the story, Harry has an white owl named Hedwig. There are also many, many other owls in the stories because they use them as message carriers. So, with the help of my mom and sister, we made 66 different cupcakes (regular sized and mini, chocolate and vanilla). We used a variety of decorations (chocolate and vanilla oreos, mini oreos, mini and regular vanilla wafers, runts, junior mints, mini and regular chocolate chips, mini and regular M&Ms, cashews, almonds, etc) to create all kinds of different looking owls. It took awhile but I loved what we came up with! They were a huge hit at the party.

Here are close ups of some of my favorites:

Her second party, the "friend" party, was a swimming party at a local indoor pool. We went with a flip-flop theme for this party. I made flip-flops with a candy mold. I used several different colors of candy melts (chocolate and vanilla flavored in pink, purple and blue) to make lots of different combinations.

These cupcakes were simply chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing that I tinted blue. The "sand" is graham cracker crumbs.

Finally, I used a different mold to make large lolli-pop flip-flops. We tied a "thank you" message from my daughter to them and included them in her goodie bag.