Valentine’s Cupcakes

I’m a huge fan of decorate-your-own cupcakes for children. It stimulates creativity, can be a learning activity (how many M&M’s do you need to circle your cupcake?), and is delicious fun for children of all ages. Plus, it can be so simple. For my daughter’s 3rd birthday, I set out cupcakes for each child with a dollop of frosting, a large craft stick for spreading, and bowls of different shaped and colored candy. The creations were one-of-a-kind to say the least.

 

On occasion, I do provide more structure to the activity by doing a sample cupcake for my daughter to copy. Recently, I happened upon this really cute Valentine’s Day cupcake and thought I’d share it with you. It’s from the FamilyFun website – one of my favorites for recipe ideas!!

Decorate a Valentine Cupcake


YOU NEED
Note: If you don’t have these ingredients, be creative. You can use any kind of cereal for hair or color shredded coconut using a few drops of food coloring. You can use raisins or candy drops to make the face.

• Ready to decorate cupcake
• Light pink or peach frosting
• Large marshmallow
• Pretzel stick
• Crisped rice cereal
• Decorator’s gel
• Candy heart

 MAKE IT

1. Frost a cupcake (baked from your favorite recipe) with pink- or peach-tinted frosting.
2. For wings, use kitchen shears to cut a large marshmallow in half vertically, then snip each half widthwise a few times for a feathery look. Press a thin pretzel stick against the sticky side of each marshmallow half, then stick the pretzels into the cupcake.
3. Press a handful of crisped rice cereal along the top of the cupcake for Cupid's curly locks, then add a decorators' gel mouth and eyes. Finally, set a candy heart in place and pipe on frosting fingers, if you like.

 --Cooking Mom