Thomas turns 2 tomorrow, so my plan was to have a bunch of stuff planned for him - which meant he obviously wasn't going to go to daycare. But they celebrate birthdays at daycare if you want to bring in treats, so I decided they could just celebrate a day early and made cupcakes to send in with him today.
Since he's obsessed with Elmo these days, I thought I would try to make him Elmo cupcakes. I probably could have looked up ideas online, but figured I could wing it well enough from previous experience. I wanted to buy the candy eyeballs I always see to save myself a little bit of trouble, but then came the issue of the frosting. Red is my nemesis color. I'm not alone with having red troubles - a search online shows all kinds of people asking for help coloring red and black.
Oh great, the two colors I happen to need...
I decided to be brave and try the red, but buy black. I ended up buying black cookie glaze because I thought it might look better from the mouth. And I remembered a neat trick from my "What's Up Cupcake" book and bought Starburst to make the nose.
Brittney even came over to help the decorating last night and I think they turned out pretty good. Not perfect, but I felt they were easily identifiable:
The textures were all a little different thanks to having two of us decorating and the icing getting warm as we worked, but my favorite was the "furry" Elmo that Brittney made:
But when I showed the Elmo obsessed toddler, he would not say "Elmo". Eventually, he saw his snack container that had Elmo on the cover behind the cupcakes and pointed to that and said "Elmo"! But no dice on the cupcakes! To be fair, the pictures make the red look a little better than it was in real life. It was definitely not Elmo red, but I couldn't put any more red dye in the frosting. I mean, I'm giving these to other people's kids and you always hear that red dye isn't that great for children. So I had to draw a line somewhere, and that line was "muted red"...
Matt said the teachers at daycare said Elmo right away, so at least they got it!
(And as I am typing this blog, I had to walk away to feed Henry and hear Thomas yelling "Elmo" from this direction. The little toot saw the cupcake photos on the screen and now thinks they look like Elmo. I swear toddlers have the directive of toying with their parents...)