Sleeping during Finals

For my 5^th and final blog post I decided to pick a cupcake that was about very near and dear to my heart, sleeping. Sleeping if very important to me especially at the end of the semester when I may not be getting as much as I should. But for these cupcakes I will be making the slumber party cupcakes out of Hello, Cupcake!, and the skill that I will try to teach you guys about today is manipulating candy. So without further a due let’s get started!

For this cupcake, I began by baking and box-mix strawberry cupcakes and while they were baking I put 2 heaping tablespoons of white frosting each into 2 separate sandwich-sized plastic bags. Then I colored one bag orange and one bright yellow.  In another baggie I placed 2 heaping tablespoons of chocolate frosting, these frosting will serve as the children’s hair. Once the cupcakes were out of the oven and cooled I frosted them with vanilla frosting and started assembling the sleeping body that would be underneath a Starburst blanket. This body was created with marshmallows, jelly beans (for the feet), and mini Nilla wafers for the head. (See picture for how to place them onto cupcake) When you are attempting to put the head onto what is presumably a marshmallow pillow put a small dab of frosting on the flat side and place it flat side down onto the pillow.

The following step of creating the Starburst blankets is probably the most important because otherwise the cupcake would like really funny. To create the blanket you must first obviously unwrap 2 Starburst and then I put them in the microwave on a paper towel for 10-13 seconds. Make sure you keep an eye on them or else you will have a big sticky mess. After you have softened the candy, roll the candy out into a 1/16 inch thick sheet of candy. (107) When it comes to cutting the candy to size of the blanket you want I would wait until the blanket was no longer warm but still slightly pliable. Also I found that using a very thin bladed paring knife was the most effective for cutting through the starburst and getting the correct shape. Continue making blankets until you have enough to cover all of you little bodies. Next to create the trim for the blanket, I used the same method as for the blanket except I cut them into strip about the width of the original blankets and about 1/5 of the original length. This trim is not necessary but it gives it pizazz so why not. After I pressed the trim into the blanket, piped a white border onto the edge of the trim.

Finally came assembling it all. Hello, Cupcake! can more easily explain the next step then I can, “Pipe the children’s eyelids with chocolate frosting, then a dot of chocolate. Pipe a dot of vanilla frosting for the mouths and add a heart décor.” (106) Next used the colored frosting and typed a variety of different hairstyles on the children. Lastly I used white frosting to attach the blanket and my sleeping people were finished.

Sleeping and baking give me relief during finals, what gives you guys release during finals week?

Expecation

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Thanks for reading, Sierra Foster

For Further Reading: Richardson, Alan, and Karen Tack. Hello, Cupcake! New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Print