Don't Eat the Cupcakes!

Take a look at these......



Pretty, don't you think? My husband said the house looked like a bakery. The thing is it didn't smell like one because you can't eat them. They are fake! Bummer.

Can you take a guess at what they are made of? Want a hint?

You find the supplies in the hardware department.

The answer: the bottom of the cupcakes are made of expansion foam and the frosting is made from spackling. Crazy, isn't it?

I found a tutorial on how to make the cupcakes at Instructables. What a great website! The directions were clear (though I would recommend a few changes - will add my notes to the bottom of this post) and there were plenty of pictures. They were tons of fun to make! The hardest part about the whole process was waiting for them to dry.

While I didn't take pictures of the whole process here are a few that I did take:

I didn't want the girls to handle the foam or spackling so I assigned Momo to be in charge of putting cupcake liners in the pan :

I filled the liners with expansion foam about 2/3 of the way full:



They got bigger.....


And then they got HUGE:



After they were completely dry we painted them. Momo painted hers to look like chocolate cupcakes and Kailani painted hers to look like vanilla cupcakes:


Unfortunately I don't have photos for the rest of the process (which was probably the most fun part - the frosting!) But again, you can find the full tutorial here.

So when I was done with the cupcakes I needed a pretty way to display them. I have a cupcake stand but the bottoms of my cupcakes were so wide they didn't fit! I really did not want to go out and buy another type of holder so I ended up making one:


I'm not crazy about my fabric choice but I really didn't want buy more fabric just for this project. PLUS, I had to keep reminding myself that the party is for THREE YEAR OLDS and they really aren't going to care (or even notice!) I simply cut out pieces of cardboard and covered them with fabric; used a salt container as the middle stand (and covered it with fabric as well) used a hot glue gun to attach the three pieces and added some ribbon. That's it! The potential to making a really pretty one is totally there!

*Notes on the tutorial:

1) I tried coloring the frosting of the cupcakes two different ways. I first tried it as recommended by the tutorial - by adding acrylic paint to the spackling. Then I tried painting the frosting when dry. I found the 2nd way to work much better. Plus, it's much quicker to do it this way if you are wanting to color your cupcakes several different colors. If you are only painting them one or two colors mixing the paint with the spackling might be easier.

2) Initially I did not buy enough spackling. So when I went back for more I bought a different type - it is pink when applied and turns white when dry. Works great - EXCEPT if you plan to mix your paint with the spackling. It totally affects the end color result. If you use the pink spackling bypass adding paint to the spackling and paint the frosting when dry.

3) As noted in the tutorial one can of expansion foam makes a LOT and you cannot store/keep the foam once opened. One can ended up making about 30+ cupcakes - and if you make them smaller than I did it would make even more! But you could always make a lot and then save them for another day to use.....