Duck Cupcakes

  I love to bake.  I'll bake just about anything and cakes and cupcakes are two things that are extremely fun to bake.  There are so many choice when baking cakes and cupcakes.  You get to choose the type of cake and the type of frosting and how you are going to decorate them.  I recently made the duck cupcakes from the What's new Cupcake book by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson.  They were really fun to make and not too difficult either!
First you pick out the kind of cupcake you want to make, I chose a homemade brown sugar (one of my favorite's! I definitely recommend it!) and a homemade chocolate sour cream cupcake and you bake them. While the cupcakes were cooling I made the frosting.  You can do any type of frosting that can be dyed.  I made a homemade cream cheese frosting.  Next, we lightly frosted each cupcake. We then took a marshmallow (roasting size) and cut it in half diagonally.  On one end of the cupcake you put a little blob of frosting and stick on the marshmallow and this will be the tail.  For the other half of the cupcake we cut donut holes in half and stuck them on with a little frosting and this will be the head.  We took the cupcakes and put them in the freezer to chill for a while so that the donut and marshmallows would not fall off.  The next step is to color a portion of the frosting yellow and to melt it in the microwave.  Then take the cupcakes and while holding them from the bottom, dip them in the melted frosting and allow the excess to drip off.  You now have a yellow duck, he just needs a face!  After you allow the cupcakes to chill awhile in the freezer you can pipe two white dots for eyes and stick on mini brown M&M's.  For the bills you can take orange fruit flavored tootsie rolls, cut them in half, and mold them into a duck bill shape.  Use a little frosting and push the bill slightly into the donut hole on the cupcake so that it doesn't fall off.  If they need it, stick them in the freezer one more time to let all of the frosting and decorations harden.  You know have a duck cupcake!

Supplies:

-Either homemade or box-mix baked cupcakes of any flavor
-Any frosting that can be colored (need about one large batch)
-spatula or spreading knife
-mini M&M's
-Fruit flavored tootsie rolls
-donut holes (any flavor should work I did vanilla glazed for my brown sugar ones and chocolate glazed for my chocolate cupcakes.)
-piping bag (optional for eyes---can use a Ziploc bag too.)
-yellow food coloring
-microwavable bowl

Picture from:
http://www.weddingbee.com/2011/04/12/hello-cupcake-books/