Spagetti and Meatball Cupcakes

While on this food themed cupcake kick I made some seriously delicious Spagetti and Meatball Cupcakes! Here is what you'll need:

Cupcakes (whatever your favorite recipe..mine is a delicious made from scratch yellow)
Frosting ( I used my favorite cream cheese recipe)
Ferrero Rocher Chocolates
1 pint halved strawberries
Sugar
Lemon Juice
Water
Cornstarch

1st boiling

2nd boil

RED SAUCE:
I would recommend making the red sauce while the cupcakes bake so that they can both cool at the same time and then when you start frosting and decorating everything will be ready. Here is the sauce recipe:
Boil on medium heat: 1/3 C Sugar, 1 pint halved strawberries, 1tsp. Lemon Juice and 2 TBS. Water. Simmer until somewhat thickened. Cool then puree. Return to saucepan. In bowl combine 1 TBS Cornstartch and 1 TBS Water. Slowly combine Cornstarch mixture with puree. Cook 1-2 minutes or until thick. Cool Completely before using.

While everything was cooling I mixed my frosting and let it sit in the fridge for a while also. I used a cream cheese frosting which is pretty difficult to decorate with since it's so creamy and not very stiff. I knew it would be so tasty with the sauce though and it's the perfect noodle color so I went ahead and tried it. I am so glad I did because it is SO YUMMY!!

Cupcakes cooled and in Disposable dish

BUILDING:
There isn't any building but I did put the cupcakes into a disposable lasagna dish. This was great not only for effect but it kept any sauce that dripped down to the bottom from running off like it could have on a cake board.

Making Noodles

DECORATING:
Okay now that the cupcakes are baked and cooled, the frosting is made and chilled and the sauce is cooked and cooled, the longest and hardest part is over! Now comes the fun and easy part...DECORATING!

The only frosting for this is the noodles and I didn't use any dyes. All I did was use the #233 (grass) tip. Once all the cupcakes were covered well I went back and put some between each of the cupcakes.

Meatballs on top of Noodles

FINISHING:
To finish I put a Ferrero Rocher chocolate on each cupcake. They have the perfect meatball looking texture! Lastly I put the sauce over the spagetti and meatballs. The sauce is so super tasty and combined with the cream cheese frosting is one of my new favorite recipes! I am going to have to find more ways to combine the two! These are YUMMY!

Finished Spagetti and Meatball Cupcakes

Hamburger Cupcakes

These cute little guys are perfect for a BBQ, picnic or any time you are missing summer. All you need is this:

Chocolate cake
Vanilla cake (lemon or white would work also)
Cupcake pans
Frosting
Sesame Seeds

Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcakes

Building

BUILDING:
Simply cut the white cupcakes in half. This is now your bun. Cut the chocolate cupcakes in half or even thirds (however thick you want your patty) and this is now your meat patty.

cheese/mustard

Ketchup

Lettuce

DETAILS:
Once you have your burgers built just add the condiments. Be sure to put some kind of topping between the bottom bun and meat AND the top bun and meat so that the whole thing stays stuck together. Here is the order I did it in. Yellow cake, Mustard/Cheese (yellow frosting[tip #103 ]), Chocolate Cake, Ketchup (Red Frosting [tip # 7]), Lettuce (Green Frosting [tip #61]) and Yellow Cake.

Hamburger Cupcakes

FINISHING:
The finishing touch is a few Sesame Seeds and voila! A Hamburger cupcake just in time for our 4th of July celebration tomorrow!

Ship Cake

First off let me say this cake could have been so much cuter if I scheduled better and made more time for the details! This was for my twins 7th birthday and I spent so much time getting everything ready for the party that I ended up on a time crunch and was decorating this Late at night when I was far past ready for bed! Luckily everything else for the party was so cute the cake was able to skate by :) Here is what you'll need:

Cake
Frosting
Pretzel Sticks
Pretzel Rod
Soft round candy (taffy, reeses, ect.)
Loaf Pans (big and small)
Construction Paper

Building

BUILDING:
I baked 2 regular sized loaf cakes then 2 mini loaf cakes. The main base is one of the regular loafs. The ends are the second loaf cut into triangles. I stacked 2 on top of each other then placed then on each of the ends. The mini loafs are on top of the main loaf and next to the triangle ends. I cut them on an angle to give it a sloped appearance and try to make more of a boat shaped appearance. I also stuck the pretzel rods aka the sails in to try to decide where I would want them after it was frosted. I have found it's a good idea to toy around with some of your details before you've frosted so you don't have as much frosting to fix once you like where it is.

Frosting

FROSTING:
I only used 2 tips for the frosting on this one and it went super fast! Because I wanted it to look like a wooden ship I was able to do long strokes from end to end. It's chocolate frosting using tip #47 and it helped give it a log or wood like texture.The blue was tip #32 frosted wavy on the bottom to look like water.

Details

DETAILS:
As I said in the beginning of this post this cake could have been so much cuter! I had a lot more detail I wanted to add but the party was in a few hours and I needed to go to bed! So here is what I did do: I used the pretzel rods and construction paper for the sails and the helm is a reeses with pretzel sticks stuck in it (but any round soft candy would work). I tried for a Crows nest but the few things I tried made it too heavy and knocked the sail down so we went without.
Now here is what else I should have done: A Graham cracker plank. One little Graham cracker rectangle stuck off the side would have made an excellent plank! And Whopper Cannon's. Whoppers stuck into the side of the ship could look like the cannons that it could shoot from and would have been awesome!

Finishing

FINISHING:
There weren't any last finishing touches I added before the party really other then a pirate ship balloon to help get the point across of what we were shooting for since this cake was pretty simple. At the end of the day all that matters though is that it is yummy and this one was delicious!!