Puppy Dog Cupcakes

For my daughter's 5th birthday, I handed her my "Hello, Cupcake!" book and asked her to pick out some special cupcakes that she would like to have for her little birthday party this year.  Of course she picks the cute little puppy dog cupcakes on the cover of the book and decides she wants a puppy themed birthday party.  I used a few different things to decorate these cute little "pup"cakes that what was in the book they turned out amazing and weren't as hard as I thought they would be.

Ingredients and supplies needed:

• 1 box cake mix and extra ingredients according to package
• 1 container pre-made white frosting (or chocolate if you want brown puppies)
• mini marshmallows
• red/pink colored sugar
• pink or red plain M&Ms
• mini chocolate chips
• Pull and Peel Twizzlers (for dog leash rope)
• regular sized cupcake papers (white)
• mini-sized cupcake papers (white)
• 1 quart plastic baggie
• Cellophane tape
• Scissors

Method:

Make up cupcakes according to the directions on the box.  A regular cake mix will make up to 24 full sized cupcakes, so you can make up 12 regular sized cupcakes and 12 mini cupcakes and use the rest of the batter to make up more mini ones or regular sized ones.  I made up more mini ones and just made faces on them and not full bodies.

Let the cakes cool fully before you begin frosting them.

The first step was to cut 12 mini marshmallows at a diagonal with kitchen shears.  If you dip the shears in water before cutting the marshmallows they don't stick as bad.  Next pour some of the pink or red colored decorating sugar in a small bowl and dip the sticky cut edge of the marshmallows into the sugar.

Prepare the icing bag by wrapping one corner of a quart sized bag with 6 layers of cellophane tape (Scotch tape).  Fill the bag with the frosting from your pre-made frosting and squeeze the air out and seal the bag shut.

With a sharp pair of scissors, clip an upside down "W" in the tip.

Squeeze a little bit of frosting on the flat side of the marshmallow ears.

Then stick them in a proportional spot on the top of a mini cupcake.  Put two ears near the top and then use a whole mini marshmallow to stick on as the nose.

Now pipe on frosting down the edges of the ears on both sides and in between.

This is what it will look like from the front when you get the ears covered....now for the front of the face.

Starting from the top just under the ears pipe down and to the sides of the face on each side to cover the face. When you get to the nose, start at the top of the marshmallow and pull down the sides of it and towards the outside of the cupcake.  You can kind of poke at the frosting all around the face a bit to create more of a spiky affect to the "fur."

Finally, you can put two eyes and nose on with mini chocolate chips.  I used an M&M for the tongue and pushed that in under the mini marshmallow nose.  Set that aside while you make the body of the puppy.

On a regular sized cupcake, start by pulling down about 1" ribbons of frosting that radiate all around the outside of the cupcake.

Then fill in the middle part of the cupcake with ribbons of frosting and then with the same poking action at the frosting with the piping bag to make a more spiky appearance to the "fur."

Now you can place the mini cupcake with the puppy face on it's side on top of the puppy body cupcake.  

You can put piece of liquorish on the side of the neck and drape to the side for the dog's lead if you'd like.

To store the cupcakes until the party, I put them on a large baking sheet and set it inside a box that could be covered.  I would recommend refrigerating or freezing the cupcakes a little bit right after frosting them to help firm up the frosting.  I would also beware making these if you are going to serve them in any type of really warm temperatures because they may melt a bit and cause the puppy heads to potentially slide off (past experience with other cakes). Normal room temperatures should be fine for holding their shape.  As you can see I also made up just faces on some of the leftover mini cupcakes and served these to the mommies at the party.

You can also use food coloring to make the frosting different colors for different colored dogs or use chocolate frosting for darker colored puppies.  I stayed with plain white as my daughter's favorite little puppy toy is all white as well.