One of the things my daughter has been looking forward to ever since Grade 1 is the Beach party that one of the Grade 3 teachers throws every year. When sh ewas asked to bring a treat, she told me she wanted to bring cupcakes, and initially chose the crab cakes that she had seen over on my friend Jenn’s blog, Clean & Scentsible.
While searching for gummies to make the crabs, we saw these small gummy worms, which looked like octopus legs, so instead of one type of cupcake for the beach party, we decided to make two! Octopus and crabs… not what I would hope to see on my beach, but hey, whatever makes the kid happy!
Now I could give you a full tutorial on how to make these octopus cupcakes, but honestly, to do so would be an insult to your intelligence. You make a cupcake, you add blue icing (or in my case, since I forgot that I planned for it to be blue, add white icing, then go back with blue food coloring on a toothpick and hand swirl blue into every white cupcake… trust me, the other way is much easier!), and then stick a gumdrop in the middle, with 8 gummy worm legs around the gumdrop. Add some candy eyes to the gumdrops (mine were the Wilton brand) using a bit of white icing as the glue (I applied it with a toothpick).
I can offer you a couple of tips, if you decide to make these though. One, don’t fill your cupcake wrappers too much. The legs stay on cupcakes with a flat top much better than ones that rise over the wrapper. Two, don’t let your eight year old daughter (or pretty much anyone) dance near the tray of already decorated cupcakes. It’s asking for disaster (and a long night).
And here they are, the finished products – the octopus and crab cupcakes! Aren’t they adorable? And if you manage to keep your tray on the counter and don’t have to do them twice, they’re actually really easy to make! We got so many compliments on them as we brought them to school, and they were so simple!
To view Clean & Scentsible’s tutorial on the crab cupcakes (I followed it except I had no graham crumbs so I used crushed oreo crumbs instead), click here.
Tre says
Wow! How creative!