I have a confession to make: I’m terrible at icing cakes. Not like “I’m not an expert but it always turns out just fine” kind of terrible, like really, actually, seriously terrible. Like I just keep adding more icing until you can’t tell there are crumbs mixed in with the icing or that the corners are falling down.
But despite my terrible icing abilities, I am still determined to ALWAYS make my kids’ birthday cakes (that and their Halloween Costumes). The cakes may not be the best looking, the most delicious or the most nutritious (yes, I use boxed mix and often canned icing) BUT no cake will ever be filled with more love and determination!
This year I had a few boxes of watermelon flavored cake (yep, artificial flavoring, coloring and all!) and Honeybun decided she wanted a purple butterfly cake. Since we were going to a craft studio for her party I decided to do cupcakes for eating at the party and the cake just for blowing out the candles at the party and to be eaten later.
We made candy melts I had bought on clearance in a flower mold I had bought on clearance. The girls helped to stir the candies util they melted and helped me fill up the mold (I had earlier piped the flowers with white and we just put the color on top). We used the flowers as decorations on top of the cupcakes.
For the big cake I could have gone out and bought a butterfly shaped cake pan but I didn’t have the time or patience to run around looking for one so I made do with what I had. I’ve always done differently shaped cakes for my kids (half-circles, triangles, hearts) so found a pattern for making a butterfly out of a circle. I poured the batter into my circle tin, then filled the cupcakes and still had a little batter left so used a mini-bread tin for the remaining batter.
I used half of the mini-loaf for the butterfly body and cut the circle into 4 pieces for the wings (down the middle then a little off center the other way). I iced the body and assembled the wings and then did my best to ice the wings.
We then used a football shaped cookie cutter as a mold and filled it in with sprinkles and I outlined the sprinkles with frosting. Add a crown, some swirly candles for antennae and a few button candles, surround with the cupcakes and voila! You’ve got a butterfly in a flower garden!
And despite me terrible icing abilities, I think the whole thing came out insanely cute:
