Back in April we were visiting my brother and his wife, Paul and Kristi, and I was looking through this great book called Hello Cupcake. This book has really cute ideas about making art out of cupcakes. While I was perusing the book I came across cupcakes made to look like bowling pins. Now, anyone who knows Ben knows he has had an obsession with bowling for quite some time (this is putting it mildly...I could fill up several posts with bowling stories...but it's not about that right now). So, we decided that a bowling party would be perfect and we would make these fabulous cupcakes as the piece de resistance of the party. The only problem was I had surgery planned for the beginning of May to repair a torn rotator cuff, so I wouldn't have the use of my right arm for Ben's party. No worries...Kristi agreed to come to my rescue and help with the cupcakes. She is awesome!
In the meantime, Ben decided he didn't want a bowling party. He's on the swim team, and he really wanted a swimming party. Well, that's easy! We do live in Texas where it's regularly 100+ degrees in June, we have access to a neighborhood pool (with lifeguards) very cheap, and it will be easy to pull off. But, oh...the cupcakes. I know! I can make a cake to look like a pool with lane lines, and then, instead of making cupcakes look like bowling pins, I can decorate them to look like little swimmers, with swim caps and everything. It will be awesome!
We read the instructions for making the cupcakes, and it went something like this: Place one standard sized cupcake right-side up, and then place a miniature cupcake upside-down on top of the first cupcake. Finally, place a donut hole on the top of the two cupcakes, sticking each piece together with icing. Freeze this structure until ready to dip. When you have all of the bowling pins/swimmers assembled, prepare the frosting by melting it slightly in the microwave, then dip the structure into the icing to cover. You will end up with a cute little bowling pin/swimmer that you can decorate. Here is an example of one of the cupcake contraptions, dressed like a penguin:
Photo courtesy J. Trevizo
The night was going well, if late. We got the cake decorated, and I must say, it looked great! We used Lifesavers for the lane lines, and licorice for some of the finishing touches. See?
Now it's time for our little swimmers. We went through the whole process, dipped them in frosting (we even colored the frosting to make them flesh-colored), and got ready to put on their swim suits. We had the brilliant idea to use fruit rollups to make their swim caps and swimsuits. All we had to do is cut the fruit rollup in a circle and then place it on their head. They'd look like a swim cap, then we'd put a little face on them and somehow fashion a swimsuit.
Oh my...that doesn't look like a little swimmer, and it certainly doesn't look like a swim cap. I can't believe that it didn't occur to us before this moment that our little swimmer man could be misconstrued.
We laughed and laughed, and we took this to my husband to see if he saw what we saw when he looked at this. His response: "I'm not eating that thing." I guess he did see it.
We weren't sure how to respond to this situation, so Kristi went to work:
Here's what we came up with:
I thought he looked more like a construction worker than a swimmer, but at this point we were all laughed out, it was very, very late, and we were out of options. We decided to sleep on it to see if a fresh set of eyes might give use some new ideas.
After much thoughtful consideration (and no new ideas), we decided to use our little swimmer/construction worker as a finishing touch on the cake. Here's the finished product:
What really counts is that Ben liked his cake.
And at the end of the day, the kids ate it up!
Love the pictures....We are thinking aobut taking our grandsons to GWL...
ReplyDeleteThe cake is so original. I like it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.
Have a great week.