Whoooooo thought it was a good idea to buy this book, anyway? Oh right, *I* did.

Because I have a penchant for attempting projects that are (a) just as complicated as they look, and (b) guaranteed to make me feel like an abject failure when I can't do them exactly right, I was attracted to this book like a crow to a shiny quarter.

"Cupcake decorating? How hard can THAT be?  And look at those  awesome cupcakes! There are cupcakes for sleepovers and snow globe cupcakes and shark attack cupcakes and..."

Where was my inner checker and balancer when I needed him? He should have been yelling, "Whoa, dude. Those cupcakes? Will take HOURS. Shut up, put the book down, and back away sloooowly." He should have beat the crap outta my Inner Wannabe Martha.

But he didn't.

And I bought the book.

And I fell in love with the owl cupcakes because they are owls and they are awesome and they seemed easy enough.

My first clue that they weren't going to be easy came when I was in Target, picking up the eleventy million things I needed for the cupcakes. I needed Runts - specifically the banana ones - to make the beaks. Target had not a single Runt in the whole store, and believe me, I looked. I perused the candy aisle. I checked every combo bag of Halloween candy. I RE-perused the candy aisle. Thinking I could use candy corn instead, I looked for a bag of that. Also a fail. (Aside: how can Target be out of candy corn? That stuff multiplies on the shelves and can usually be found en masse in the clearance bin until well after Thanksgiving.) I finally had to go to Giant Eagle and spend 10 minutes painstakingly picking out the banana Runts from the bulk candy dispenser while ignoring the odd looks of everyone around me.

My second clue came when Sunday morning found me tediously scraping filling off of Oreo halves and then cutting the empty wafers into thirds. Did you know that it's damn hard to cut an Oreo without it crumbling into bits? Well it is. Consider yourself warned.

Miss O had a playdate yesterday, so I co-opted the free labor to help me assemble the owls. I was wholly unprepared for the mess (OMG, frosting everywhere), and also for the FrankenOwls that the girls ended up making. Dude, some of those owls had four eyeballs and two noses and maybe just possibly a bindi. There was also a cyclops.

Despite the mess and the tedium and the ears and eyes that kept falling off, I think they came out kinda freakycute.

And apparently they taste yummy, too.

Comments

[Tina]

Those are too cute!

Call me confused though. Why did you have to scrape off the Oreo filling? And why were you cutting them into thirds? They look like whole Oreos to me...

[Jennifer]

Tina, the eyes are whole oreo halves (does that make sense?) and the ears are made from the other, filling-less half. So, basically, you split the Oreo veeeerrry carefully, trying to keep all the filling on one half. Then you scrape off the other half and slice it into thirds (discarding the middle piece) to make a set of ears.

[Burgh Baby]

They turned out SUPER cute, and now I'll be trying to concoct a way to make them that doesn't involve tearing apart a bunch of Oreos. Double chocolate cookies with white icing, perhaps?

[Tina]

Ahh.. the ears are covered in frosting, so I didn't even realize they were the other Oreos. Clever! And time consuming!

[ClumberKim]

Those are incredible! Thanks for sharing.

[Jennifer]

ClumberKim - thank you! Now you see why I was dying (and drooling) over those cupcake holders you got as a gift.

[Stephanie]

Those are incredibly cute! :-) I may have to put that book on my wishlist and see if anyone gets it so I can torture myself over the next several years.

[Jen]

Adorable! And that explains the plurk about the banana runts ;) hehe

[Rachel]

Those are darling! Way to go!!

[Allison]

I'm 99% sure that I am going to giant eagle to look like a crazy lady scooping out banana runts today. These are my favorite halloween treat I've seen, so I think I'm going to steal the idea and make them :)

They really are super cute! You did a great job!