Elmo Cupcakes

While out in Ohio last week, I got to make my nephew's birthday cake.  Last year he was too little to have a favorite, so we went with a typical boy sports theme.

A year later and he's definitely got a favorite, and it's this guy:

Personally, I was a huge Ernie fan as a kid, but I do think Elmo is pretty cute also, he wasn't around when I was a kid!!!!  Originally I was going to use the football pan from last year, but it mysteriously disappeared so I went with plan b, Elmo Cupcakes!

I really don't like red frosting so I tinted the frosting and then covered each cupcake in red decorating sugars.  The eyes are coconut jelly beans cut in half with a dot of melted chocolate that squeezed out of a zip lock bag with the corner snipped off.  Elmo's nose is an orange jelly bean.  Realized the night before making these, I could go to a candy store and only buy the amount of each color of jelly bean that I needed instead of having to buy a large bag of mixed and hope there was enough of what I needed!  I might be the last person to know that, but if not, that's my tip of the day, lol!!!

For his big-ol grin, we split your basic "sandwich cookies" scraped out the creme filling and cut them in half.  Slow sawing resulted in less breakage of the cookies.  I did need a bit more icing on the back of each cookie to "glue" them in place.

Tatertot mush have overheard the discussion of the cupcakes because he woke up from his nap (I decorated while he napped) asking for Elmo Cake.  He was so incredibly thrilled when he got his own Elmo cupcake.

This was only the first day with is cousins.  By the end of the week, the poor babe was so over tired from not wanting to miss a minute of his time with them, especially O-man!

Peace be with you,