Mr. Scarecrow

Last weekend I made this cute Mr. Scarecrow cupcake display for the birthday party of a friend of my daughter.  The friend's mom asked if I would make this for the dessert table at the party.  I was thrilled to do it.  It was a lot of fun to make and decorate.  The idea comes from the What's New, Cupcake? book which is the second book of cupcake novelty creations.  I actually have both the books, although I had never fully used the recipes before.  I love looking through them and have been inspired by a few to make my own variation.  Some of the decorations for Miss D's sand-castle cake were adapted from the cupcake version in the book.

The recipe was straight-forward using all store bought ingredients.  I made the cupcakes from scratch, rather than a mix just because I prefer it.  The frosting was the canned variety, as they don't recommend using homemade for these types of creations.  I really believe that the hardest part is finding all of the candies, cookies, etc. for decorating. One shredded wheat biscuit, one graham cracker, 2 red chewy candies, and on and on.  I ended up making the breadsticks myself.  Who knew that breadsticks would be hard to find?   Anyway, as with any endeavors, I end up learning along the way.  Some lessons learned:

-Make and frost the cupcakes ahead of time.

-Candy decorations, especially the caramel and chewy candy, can't be refrigerated.  They will be fine when they are ice cold, but will melt and bleed as they warm up.  I learned this making candy sushi.

-For above reason, I didn't refrigerate the cupcakes.  Warm cupcakes are harder to transfer from the cupcake carrier to the cake board.

-Certain elements do not hold up well over time, so leave off the candy and cookie decorations until right before the party.  The moisture in the frosting will also melt the candies a bit and soften the cookies/crackers.  I think they held up okay, but they definitely looked neater when I made them the night before.

All in all, I think it came out pretty cute.    Happy Birthday Fayth!

Pretty cute, huh?