Elise's 2nd Birthday: Butterfly Cupcakes

My sister-in-law gave me free artistic rein on the butterfly cupcakes. I had always wanted to try these 3-d chocolate butterflies that I had seen in the Hello, Cupcake! book but never had an excuse to make them... until now! Unfortunately the instructions that they gave in the book didn't work for me - the butterfly wings just weren't looking the way I wanted them to. So I did a little brainstorming and with the help of my sister we had 20 beautiful, colorful, unique butterflies on our hands! I baked some confetti cupcakes, iced them with buttercream frosting and my sister rimmed the edges with rainbow sprinkles that she had mixed up. Then I positioned the wings on the cupcakes at different angles to make it appear that the butterflies were fluttering on the cupcakes. So impressive and so fun! I have a feeling I will be using a lot of candy melts in the future for decorating. I see some candy clay in my future...

Elise's 2nd Birthday: Butterfly Cake

So this blog began with my niece's first birthday cake and now we have arrived at her second birthday cake! My sister-in-law requested two items: a butterfly cake for Elise's actual birthday party and butterfly cupcakes for the family celebration that evening. And so I had my mission. Here is the butterfly cake! White cake tinted a lovely shade of purple on the inside and the outside decorated with all the colors of the rainbow! The colored part of the wings had corresponding colored sugar on top of them to make them really bright! I also used Twinkies to make the body of the butterfly which ended up being the perfect size and shape! Elise and all of her little party guests really enjoyed this cake. I even got to use my new letter cut-outs to write a birthday message on it for her! All-in-all a great way to begin a new year of decorating. It turned out exactly how I envisioned it! Now on to the butterfly cupcakes...