Seaside Cupcakes

My grandson turned ONE and I had a chance to get creative designing cupcakes for his pool birthday party.  

Cupcakes and Frosting – I used my vegan cupcake recipe which you can find here   This recipe creates a tender cake and uses no eggs.  I used Spelt Flour (but you can use flour of your choice) and unsweetened almond milk (but you can use milk of your choice).

 Half of the batter I left vanilla and the other half I added some melted chocolate and butterscotch chips plus cocoa.

I used a decorator bag and tip to help the frosting resemble ocean waves.  I was going to use cute ocean themed cake decorations I found on all the cupcakes but could only find 1 package of 5 at the store.  I was tired and didn’t want to run around so I came up with chocolate shells and starfish to use.  Here is how I did it:

Vanilla Candy Melts (can find at your craft store)

A shell candy mold (I remembered I had this in a cupboard way back from my days of raising children)

Decorator Sugar blue and yellow (kind of looked like sand)

Food Coloring (blue)

1 package of premade  sugar cake toppers 

To make the candy shells:  

1.  Melt some of the vanilla candy melts in a bowl in the microwave for 30 second increments – stirring in between. Don’t overcook the chocolate.   I then placed the melted chocolate in a ziplock bag and slightly cut the corner.  This gave me a way to squeeze the chocolate into the molds.  Fill mold 1/2 of the way , give a couple of light taps on the counter and stick in freezer.  They will be ready to pop out in minutes.  I also added some blue sprinkles into the chocolate.  Then on others I placed some sprinkles in the bottom on the mold and then added the chocolate on top.  This gave me three different looks to my shells.

To make the starfish:

1.  Use a sharp knife and score from center out five or six times.