Beachy Cupcakes

Sorry, it has taken me a few days to update this blog but I have a good excuse...I've been working on these.

These "beachy" cupcakes were created for a summer/beach themed little girl's birthday party. The cake is vanilla as is the buttercream frosting. The "sand" is made up of finely ground cinnamon teddy graham crackers and the decorations are fondant.

They took a lot longer to make than I had anticipated. Mainly b/c I needed to make 40cupcakes and with only one oven this meant baking up 3 batches. Also, making ALL those fondant decorations took me 2 days!! However in the end, I'm really pleased with how they turned out and I hope the little girl's parents will be too. I'm delivering them tomorrow just before the party!

Here is another look.

A close up of the little crabs and starfish.

and all those flip-flops!

All packed up and ready to go.


Ingredients:
This makes 12-14 cupcakes.

½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
¼ cup whole milk

1-1 1/4 cups vanilla buttercream frosting (will post recipe another time)
1 cup finely ground cinnamon teddy graham crackers
fondant decorations (see here for instructions)
cocktail drink umbrellas

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a muffin tin with 12 paper liners. Set pan aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides and beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Evenly fill the muffin cups with the batter and bake for about 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in pan 5 minutes. Transfer cupcakes to a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

Apply frosting to cupcakes. I piped them with a #1 Wilton's tip. Then carefully dip each cupcake in the ground up graham crackers. Top with a fondant decoration and a cocktail umbrella.