Alpaca cupcakes for an Alpaca princess!

I keep telling myself I’ll post at least once a week, but then I end up having to travel or get so busy I forget, so I’m really determined to start posting more! So today I’m going to show you how to make super easy, and super cute cupcakes that look like Alpacas : ).

You’re probably wondering why I decided, out of all the animals out there, why I’d choose to make alpacas as my theme.  Well, it’s not because they’re my favorite animal (that spot in my heart is reserved for sloths), but they happen to be my best friend Laina’s (aka my Alpaca princess) favorite animal.   Her obsession with the cute fluffy animal runs as deep as mine for sloths (which is a lot of love, if I do say so), and her birthday was right around the corner.  Normally I’d make her a cake, but since we’d be out of town attending a convention over the weekend, I decided to make something more portable, and thus alpaca cupcakes were created.

Some of our birthday party attendants included a royal alpaca, and a not so happy money octopus.

Camo Cupcakes

A couple of months ago I rotated out of my old program at work. There were also a few new people who had rotated in, so our team decided to have a celebratory cook out : ).  I’m typically in charge of bringing dessert to our cook outs, so I decided to make cupcakes.  Because I work for the military, I wanted to do something fun and themed, so I decided to make some camo cupcakes!  This was super easy, and looked really neat, let’s begin!

When life gives you failed cakepops, make some cupcake toppers!

A couple of weeks ago it was a coworker’s birthday. He happened to be a fan of golf, so I immediately thought to make golf ball cakepops! I’ve been making cake pops for years, and I’ve never had issues making them before until this little project rolled around! Normally, the last step in cakepops is to dip the cake ball in your melted chocolate/candy coating. However, to make accurate golf balls (as in to include the texture of a golf ball as opposed to a smooth surface of a normal cakepop) you need to use a mold. I had never made cakepops using a mold, so this was a bit of an adventure for me, one that didn’t end up quite the way I initially intended it to! But that’s the great thing about cooking, even when things don’t go perfectly, there is usually a positive way of salvaging your disaster : )!

In my case, my failed cake pops turned into cupcake toppers, so all was well in the end. I will eventually make a post dedicated solely to making cakepops the way I normally make them, but for now I’ll show you the process I used for this particular project.

Ok, let’s begin with the basics of cakepops!

Chocolate Strawberry Cupcakes

Earlier this month we celebrated my friend Amanda’s birthday, and of course my friend Laina and I had to make something!  I can’t take much credit for the original idea of these cupcakes as Laina showed me a picture of them that she had seen floating around the web, but I found them so cute and easy that I just had to share : ).

For these cupcakes you’ll need…