Garden Cupcakes

So my mom's garden club was having a party and she was asked to bring dessert. She knows I love to make desserts so she asked me if I wanted to do something. I said yes because there's this recipe in my book 'Hello Cupcake' that has garden cupcakes. For ingredients, I used vanilla cake batter, chocolate frosting, crushed oreos, 4 graham crackers, white chocolate wafers, white frosting, red, blue, green, & orange food coloring, a piece of 5 gum, pretzel sticks, chocolate covered sunflower seeds, frosted flakes, green m&m's, 6 red starbursts, 4 orange flavored tootsie rolls, 6 orange starbursts, 3 white vanilla flavored tootsie rolls, and 6 green tootsie rolls. For all of the candy pieces at the end, I just went to Market Basket and got a bag of mixed candy for like a pinata or something.

To make these cupcakes, I baked them, obviously, and then frosted them with the chocolate icing. Then I crushed the oreos and put them on top of the cupcakes. Then I worked on one vegetable at a time. We'll do the radishes first, I took the white tootsie rolls and cut them up into fourths and rolled them in my hands to get them warmed up and easy to shape. Then you take the red starbursts and cut them probably in half, give or take. Then you roll those around in your hands and kind of mush the two colors together and roll it around to get the radish shape. Make five of these and stick them on the column of cupcakes on the left. 

Then, for the peas, you take the 4 green tootsie rolls and warm them up in your hands and then flatten them out with a rolling pin to get a round shape, you can cut it with a knife to get this. Then, you stick about 4 green m&m's in the middle of the oval and fold it over to look like a pea. Make four of the peas and stick them in the second to left column and skip one space.

Next, for the carrots, you take the four orange tootsie rolls and roll those around in your hands to get the big carrot shape. Do this to all four of the tootsie rolls and stick them in the cupcakes randomly in the second to right column. Then, take the orange starbursts and do the same thing that you did with the larger ones. Stick those in randomly in the cupcakes too. You can take some crushed oreos and sprinkle those on the carrots to make them look fresh. 

Next, for the lettuce, take the white frosting and stick it in the microwave for about 10 seconds - ish. Keep an eye on it because things with more sugar heat up more quickly. Take about half of the frosting and dye it green. Then take a cookie sheet with wax paper on it and throw about a cup or so of the frosted flakes onto it. Then pour the green melted frosting over the frosted flakes. This really got my hands covered in frosting, and is difficult to do when it's hot out. It gets really sticky and I don't really know a better way to do it. Stick those in the fridge to get nice and cold and then take the green tootsie rolls and cut the two remaining ones in half and roll those pieces around in your hands and make a ball shape and stick them into the middle of the right column of cupcakes for the center of the lettuce. Leave one of the cupcakes empty. Once the frosted flakes are cold, which I'm pretty sure I left those in overnight, you can take them off the cookie sheet and stick them into the lettuce cupcakes all around the green center. Also stick about two frosted flakes at the end of the radishes you made first. 

Then, for the signs, take the white chocolate wafers and melt them in a bowl in the microwave for 10 second intervals until they're melted. Then, cover 4 halfs of the graham crackers with the white chocolate and stick those onto a wax paper covered cookie sheet and let that cool in the fridge. When that's cool, take a pretzel stick and stick it onto the back of each sign with frosting and let that cool. Then, take the remaining white frosting and die it red, green, orange, and blue. Also get the chocolate frosting out. Put those frosting colors into little ziplock bags and just snip a little tiny hole at the end and pretty much design the signs however you want to. You can do a little border with the blue and write the name of the vegetables in the chocolate and draw the veggies on the signs, go crazy. Then stick those in the cupcakes in the furthest row in order of the veggies you made.

Lastly, some pretzel sticks and break them off about whatever height you think a shovel would look good in your garden. then break off another smaller piece and glue it onto the longer piece with frosting, that'll be the shovel's handle. Then take the piece of 5 gum and cut it in half and fold it to make it look like a shovel spade and glue that onto the long shovel part with frosting. Make two of these and stick them into the last two empty cupcakes. Finally, take the chocolate covered sunflower seeds and scatter them onto the cupcakes with the shovels. You can stick them onto the cupcakes with frosting if they keep falling off.