My best friend Sue that's who!!! After much deliberation about what to make to celebrate, we agreed on owl cupcakes. Mostly because her daughter says "whooo" every time she sees an owl, which is just ridiculously cute. So, we do everything we can to make her say it again, even making owl cupcakes. And seriously, what better way to celebrate getting older than with a cupcake? Cupcakes are the best, because they make you feel like a happy, giddy little kid no matter what...especially when they're covered with candy and oreos!
The design for these cupcakes came from Hello Cupcake, which is just a fantastic book of cupcake decorating. You name the celebration, this book has a cupcake design to fit it. For cupcake lovers, this is a great book. Even if you're not much of a baker, this makes a great coffee table book.
For the cupcake and frosting, the recipe I used was Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate cake and frosting. This decision was in large part based upon my lack of motivation to look farther than the back of the Hershey cocoa sitting in my cabinet for a recipe. But, this statement is not 100% fair to good old Hershey, because they may well have created the perfect chocolate cake and frosting recipe. This recipe has never let me down. Time and time again, it results in a delicious, moist chocolate cake that stays moist longer than it can last in any chocolate-loving household and frosting that is beautifully chocolaty without being cloyingly sweet.
To decorate the cupcakes, I frosted them with some of the chocolate frosting, and then put the remaining frosting in a piping bag with a basket weave piping tip. I then unlocked the magic in a whole bag of oreos...okay double stuff oreos, because it is a special occasion after all. I usually like to twist my oreos to split them, but to make sure I didn't lose any frosting or "eye whites" I used a knife to split them. I then put two oreos with the white center on each cupcake. I broke the unfrosted sides of the oreos into quarters and put them with the arc pointing to the middle to make the eyebrows. I piped over these eyebrows with the frosting in the basket weave piping bag to make it look like fur and then piped a bit more on the sides of the oreo to look like more fur. For the eyeballs, I used a bit of chocolate frosting to glue on junior mints to the oreos. For the nose, the book recommends using the banana runts. I'm not a huge fan of runts, but I LOVE candy corn. So, I made the executive decision to use candy corn instead.
I think they came out pretty cute. They looked enough like owls that Sue's daughter said "whoo", and well that's a sufficient success for me.
Happy Birthday Sue! Welcome to the 30 club.
Love
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