Desert Boy's Elmo Cupcakes

Desert Boy is turning three, and to celebrate with his preschool class the other day he wanted some Elmo cupcakes. I thought about it and told him okay. After all, last year he wanted a train cake and if I do say so myself, it came out pretty spectacular. We had an engine and three train cars, all decorated with bright colors and an assortment of trimmings. Never mind that the cake was literally held together was frosting, it still tasted and looked great!

Back to the Elmo cupcakes. I looked on the Internet and saw the photo above and thought how adorable those cupcakes were. Surely I could make something similar, especially since I had a new icing doohickey with different tips.

So I gave it my best try, and this is what I ended up with:

My husband didn't even know who the cupcakes were supposed to represent and said they looked scary.

This poor Elmo even had a runny nose.

Note to others aspiring to make Elmo cupcakes: if you don't know how to work icing doohickeys, take the shortcuts. For eyes cut large marshmallows in half or use little candy eyes. For the nose use an orange gumdrop so you don't have to mix food coloring for half an hour to try to get an orange color. For a mouth use some black licorice or half a wafer of an Oreo cookie.

Of course I didn't have any of those ingredients on hand, and I didn't have time to drive an hour to the grocery store to get them.

Fortunately, Desert Boy didn't care. He was so happy to have candles to blow out on his Elmo cupcakes.

And his friends were delighted to eat them. Mission accomplished. And those of you who have made picture perfect Elmo cupcakes, just keep it to yourself!