It's possible that I have a tendency to overcompensate. Maybe.
OK, I totally do.
Which is exactly why I set out to make the most adorable cupcakes EVER for Alexis' school Christmas party this year. Last year the supplies for holiday parties thing was a battle royale. Emails were sent with detailed lists of party needs and those of us who very badly wanted to bake tasty things for the kids often found ourselves sending plastic spoons to school. Apparently other people keep a constant eye on email, so when the lists would go out, all the fun stuff would be snagged within minutes. Those of us WHO HAVE LIVES (ahem), would reply to the emails an hour after they were sent and fifty minutes after any fun stuff was left.
So I decided I was making Christmas cupcakes this year and nobody could stop me.
Mission accomplished.
These are plain white cupcakes with cream cheese buttercream frosting. Regular buttercream would be fine, too. They just need a thicker frosting that gets a little stiff when it sets.
A mountain of frosting isn't really the best idea for kid cupcakes, so I cheated.
Regular-sized cupcake, meet mini cupcake.
A layer of frosting acts as a glue.
Then I globbed on some frosting all around.
And smoothed it out.
A coating of sprinkles went on, and then I used a toothpick to stack some gumdrops.
A big white gumdrop became the base of the snowman, a small white gumdrop his head, and a small black gumdrop was his hat. The brim of the snowman's hate is a slice of a big gumdrop.
His eyes and mouth were drawn on with an edible marker. His nose is a tiny little dot of orange-tinted frosting. His scarf is a Twizzlers Pull and Peel.
WAY easy.
I also made some Christmas trees using a large green gumdrop, a small green gumdrop, and a yellow star-shaped fruit snack.
It took about an hour to frost and decorate 25 of these. In other words, I may have been overcompensating, but I did it in a very efficient way.
So stinking cute.