Lindstrom Life: Lacking Art Skills

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Lacking Art Skills

So I gave my first decorative cupcakes a shot for a baby shower last weekend. The theme was birds, so I went with a bird nest/egg theme.

These were in my Martha Stewart Cupcake book, and they are perfect! But I haven't had much icing experience, so I figured they wouldn't look like birds when I finished!

I ultimately decided on these that I found online at this blog & they are perfect! She did such a good job. My #1 reason being they had an icing nest. Most of the nests I was finding were made with toasted coconut. Looks great but I loathe stringy coconut. And I didn't want to risk others picking it off, etc. And #2 because they are super cute and looked easy enough.

I decided to use Martha's recipe for white cupcakes, those turned out good...no issues. I made them the night before. I also made the risky decision to make her buttercream recipe the next morning. I had my appropriate icing tips, the green food coloring for the edge portion, and the chocolate buttercream ready to go. Unfortunately, my new (wedding gift) Kitchen Aid Mixer is in storage. I was stuck using a hand mixer for this. It didn't get quite smooth enough, but was ok. The recipe said it made 5 cups. I assumed that was enough for 24 little nests. WRONG. I had to go to the store to get regular icing to mix with my homemade stuff to have enough, but it worked! I also used those mini-Whoppers robin eggs which worked out well.

I began trying to ice the green edges on. It looked awful! Like a 2 yr old did it. I was so flustered I forgot to take a picture! So long story short, I was short on time & just knew these were not going to be presentable or look like the picture above! Eric came in and assisted me, and that's all I will say :) They got done! And weren't huge, gross blobs! Although the nests were more swirly than I my perfectionist self wanted, but oh well! Everyone really liked them and they worked out very well in the end.