Puppy Cupcakes

And no, by puppy cupcakes I do not mean cupcakes made out of puppies, as StinkyMan suggested, clearly delighted by his own joke. Nor are they cupcakes for puppies. In fact they would make your puppy quite sick.

No, these cuties were for a puppy themed birthday party. I saw a picture and thought "I can do that!" and started planning. Here is the end result:

Sweet, right?

Want the step by step?

OK, well, step 1: Make your cupcakes and your icing. Mine are chocolate, with butter cream frosting.

Step 2. After they've cooled, cut a hole out of your cupcake and put a donut hole in it (I had to shave some of the sides of the donut hole off)

Frost away! (I used Wilton tip 18)

I was going to make fondant for tongues and ears, though in the picture I saw I thought the ears looked more like fruit roll up. My ever so clever friend Sandy over at Modern Simplicity suggested rolled out caramels and that the tongue could be made out of rolled out pink Starburst candies. Both solutions sounded much easier than making a batch of fondant. Thanks Sandy!

I discovered after about 6 cupcakes worth of tongues and ears, it's MUCH easier if you cut the Starbursts and caramels in half before you roll them out. That makes them much easier to shape and more to scale for the cupcake.

I used mini M&M's for the eyes. I did put extra frosting under the ears to help them stick.

And finally, a jelly bean nose on top of the frosted donut hole:

Almost too cute to eat! Happy Birthday Amelia!