In which Tom learns what a prize he has in me

So yesterday was Nicky's actual birth date. I went to work though and so when I got home Nicky and I made cupcakes while daddy cooked dinner. The time change has really thrown Nicky for a loop though and he was exhausted after dinner. So he had a bath and went to bed (in his new Elmo sheets) and I went to ice the cupcakes after he was already in bed.

I only had about 1/3 of a container of frosting (left over from Valentine's day's cupcakes) to work with, and that's not much for 24 cupcakes, but I persevered and spread the icing thin.

Well that wasn't very exciting, and you could totally see the cupcakes (yellow cake by the way) through the icing in spots. Hmm. A quick look through the cupboards and all I could find were red sugar crystal sprinkles (again, left over from Vday). I thought maybe if I had a cookie cutter I could use it to make a sprinkle shape on each cupcake and that would be cute, but alas, no cookie cutters in my house. (Need to remedy that!) So then I was looking all over the kitchen for something, anything to use to make an interesting sprinkle pattern. I found a slotted spatula and thought it might make nice horizontal lines, and then maybe I could do a checkered pattern or something. So I held that over the cupcake (didn't want to set it down on the icing) and sprinkled away.

Result? A cupcake totally covered in red sprinkles. No pattern at all.

Bummer.

Well, I just figure I'll just sprinkle the heck out of the cupcakes and Nicky'll like it anyway. So I get to sprinkling. 24 red cupcakes later I start thinking, "Hmm, you know what else is red? Elmo! These could be little Elmo faces!"

I happen to have a bag (or two) of mini marshmallows on hand (must have for my hot cocoa you know) and Elmo has big white eyes on the top of his head. So I put two marshmallows on each cupcake. We're getting there.

What else? I call to Tom in the den, "What color and shape is Elmo's nose?" At which point he's like WTF? I'm trying to play a game in here and she want's me to research Elmo's nose? But he plays along and tells me it's round and orange. (Just between you and me I don't believe him and so went over to double check Nicky's party plates. Yep, there it is. Round and Orange. Well whaddayaknow.) I realize I have jellybeans I bought for Nicky's Easter basket, so I dump them in a bowl and fish out all the orange ones (my favorites by the way). I pop those in each cupcake for a nose. (Of course after seeing the plates I realized the eyes should have been closer together, but Nicky'll never notice.)

Now I just need a mouth. I don't have any licorice or something to make a smiley mouth, but I do have raisins. So I put one rasin on each cupcake and stand back to look. Hmm, it was totally missing something. You know what? Elmo needs pupils. because without them he just looks blank and kind of scary. See:


Elmo needed some pupils.

Peppercorns? Well they're round and black, but on a cupcake?

Draw it on with a sharpie? Well, that's probably a bit on the toxic side. Not the best idea for my two year old.

Chocolate chips? They're too big really for this, and cutting them into little pieces, well that's a lot of work!

I opened up the fridge to look around in there. Soy sauce, grape juice, red koolaid, grape jelly, chocolate syrup... hey! That's it!

So I grabbed the chocolate syrup and poured some in a bowl. Using a toothpick I painted a dab on each marshmallow. And 48 pupils later I had these:



And they are AWESOME! By this time it was nearing midnight. Of coruse I had to have Tom come and ooh and ahh over them a bit. Cause I mean look! Totally cool Elmo cupcakes when he just got Elmo sheets and is having an Elmo party with an Elmo cake next weekend! And I had started out with NOTHING! I wasn't even sure I had a cake mix at home when we started. I only had a smidgen of icing! Yeah, I amaze me.

You do have to realize that cooking is NOT my forte. I did manage to feed my guests over the weekend, and no one died of food poisoning or starved, but really, I pulled out all my cooking skills to pull off the cheesy scrambled eggs, sausage, toast, PBJ and burritos that made up our Saturday meals.

So anyway, after Tom's appropriate admiration of my 48 masterpieces, I took a slew of photos and then put 16 in the fridge and 6 in the microwave. That left 2 that tom and I had to eat. They were tasty.

And I didn't even hear Elmo scream. Although I admit... he did look pretty scared.