I’m loving my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer! We made buttercream frosting for the first time and it was so easy. Okay, well making the frosting was easy, getting it to be the right color orange was sort of a challenge. We had all sorts of peachy pink colors for a while.
I think our Lego Minifigure Cupcakes turned out great!
1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened
1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar (approximately 1 lb.)
2 tablespoons milk
Makes: About 3 cups of icing
In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.
To make orange we used Wilton’s Gel Food Coloring. We started out with 2 parts red to 1 part yellow and kept adding a little at a time using the same ratio (about 2 more times). The last addition was 4 parts red and 1 part yellow.
A, my very talented crafty girl, used the 1M tip to pipe the frosting on to the cupcakes, following the directions we found online. It was super easy. She was supposed to share with mom, but she was having too much fun. I think I got to try out one or two cupcakes.
A little fun with Photoshop Elements, and some help with a duo circle punch, and these cupcake toppers were easy to make.
In Photoshop Elements, I cropped the minifigure photos into a 1.25″ circle using the cookie cutter tool. Then, I copied that layer into a new 8.5 x 11 inch document (and repeated for all the minifigures) so I could print all the minifigure heads and Happy Birthdays on one sheet of card stock. To make the Happy Birthday circles, I typed Happy Birthday using the Lego font that I used for the invitations and just copied that layer as many times as I needed.
After everything was printed, I used the Creative Memories Circle Maker to punch out the Lego Minifigure heads and Happy Birthdays (using the smaller circle). I used the larger circle punch to punch orange card stock for my matting. Everything was put together using scrapbook adhesive. In between two pieces of orange card stock, I used scrapbook adhesive to hold a toothpick (about 1/3 of the toothpick was inside the card stock, the other 2/3 was used to stick through the icing and cupcake).
Be sure to check out my other Lego Birthday posts:
How to Make Lego Minifigure Invitations
How to Make Lego Marshmallow Pops
Have fun Lego Birthday planning!