Bug Bug is turning 4 in one week! We started celebrating today with a playgroup get-together. Since the girls started school, we don't see nearly enough of each other, but we met weekly on Tuesdays for the first 3 years of the girls' lives. Three of them have birthdays within a few weeks of each other, so we decided a cupcake party at the park would be a great way to celebrate.
I volunteered to make the cupcakes, and my mom helped me pick a design from Hey There, Cupcake!. We chose the adorable panda cupcakes. I used the book's basic vanilla cupcake recipe and tried out a marshmallow buttercream (perfectly fine, but nothing to write home about; at least it satisfied my curiosity). Josh helped me decorate, which was lots of fun. I couldn't find nonpareils for the ears (except for $18/lb at Gelson's, and I am cheap), so I used dipping chocolate disks both for ears and eyes. (My friend, Liz, pointed out that I could've gotten Sno-Caps at the movie theater - or Blockbuster!) I added white chocolate chips for eyeballs and dyed some frosting black for pupils. Noses were made of chocolate-covered raisins.
They came out super cute, and the girls devoured them. Even my kids each ate a whole cupcake, which is a pretty unusual accomplishment (for Bug anyway). I'm not sure they look exactly like pandas - maybe more like lemurs or bush babies - but they were a lot of fun!
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And they *totally* look like pandas!