One Fish Two Fish Cupcakes

This past Saturday we celebrated my (not-so baby) boys 1st birthday party.  And oh my, what fun it was!! There was lots of great food provided by everyone, wonderful company and LOTS of laughs!  We sure have some silly kids (and adults!) in this family!  Owen got into the full spirit of things and completely smashed his smash cake.  It was unbelievable how excited and into it he got!  When Jackson turned one, we had to take his hand and smash it into his cake for him- NOT OWEN!  The moment it was put onto his tray his hand went right in it and it was craziness from then on!  He knew exactly what to do and HE. WAS. A. MESS!  But boy, did he have fun.  And so did we- it is just what you want your one year old to do with a smash cake, it was hilarious.

When coming up with decorations, what originally started out as just a "fishy" themed birthday slowly morphed into a Dr. Seuss Birthday Party.  I wanted to keep the cost down and realized we owned tons of books that would work awesome as decorations- they are colorful, silly and encouraged people to pick them up and read.

I used some of my drawing skills and hand drew the rest of the pictures to hang around the house.  What resulted was a party that was super inexpensive and such fun!  Perfect for our joyful Owen.

After the fun I had decorating my owl and bat cupcakes for Halloween, I knew I wanted to do another fun cupcake for Owen's party.  Since I was focusing on the decorating, I made things easy on myself and just used a boxed yellow cake for the cupcake's.  If you happen to have a great cupcake recipe, please send it my way! But this worked great for me, and everyone seemed to enjoy them.  For the first time I used a soft gel paste food coloring to dye my frosting. It was a recommendation of my cake lady down the street, and she was right!  This stuff is awesome.  It only took a little bit to achieve such a great blue color (and it didn't dye peoples lips and tongue!)  After mixing the food coloring into the frosting, I spooned it into a gallon-sized ziplock bag and snipped the tip.  This worked perfect as my pastry bag since I don't own one of those fancy things.

Starting on the outside edge of the (completely cooled) cupcakes, I slowly piped the icing in a circular motion, working my way to the center.  I wanted to achieve a sort of "water and wave" appearance, so I wasn't concerned about the pipping to look perfectly even.  Then I sprinkled them lightly with blue sugar crystals and placed different colored goldfish crackers jumping in and out of the "waves".  Next I added white pearl candies to create the look of the fishes air bubbles.  And there you have it, One Fish Two Fish Cupcakes :)  Pretty fun if you ask me!

I knew they would look cute- but at first I wasn't sure how the goldfish crackers would taste on top of the cupcakes, but they were actually delicious together!  They gave a nice crunch, texture is always a good thing, and also a very light salt flavor to the already sweet cupcakes.  It made a nice combo.

One Fish Two Fish Cupcakes
makes 24 traditional-sized cupcakes (or 12 trad. and 24 mini, or 48 mini)

1 box yellow cake mix (or a batch of your favorite yellow cake), prepare as directed for cupcakes
24 large cupcake liners (I used 12 large and 24 mini)
1 tub white frosting (or a batch of your favorite white frosting)
blue food coloring, I highly recommend AmeriColor
1 bag of mini goldfish crackers
blue sugar crystals
mini pearl candies (look in your local cake supply store)

Prepare cupcake batter as directed on the back of the box, filling the cupcake liners 3/4 the way full.  Bake at 350 degrees for 15-18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Please note, mini cupcakes will take a much shorter amount of time, so please keep watch!  Remove from cupcake pan and allow to cool COMPLETELY on a wire rack before frosting them.

While you are waiting for the cupcakes to cool, dye frosting by adding a few drops of food coloring at a time until you get the desired color.  Mix well.  Spoon frosting into a pastry bag, or a gallon-sized ziplock bag and snip the end.  Carefully push all the frosting down to the snipped end of the bag to create a nice tube of frosting.  Once the cupcakes are cool, gently and slowly squeeze the frosting out of the bag onto the cupcakes in a circular motion, working from the outside in creating little peaks of frosting.

Next lightly sprinkle the cupcakes with the blue sugar crystals, place the goldfish crackers in the "waves" you just created in the blue frosting and then in a zig-zag pattern arrange the white pearled candies to create the air bubbles.

And there you have it- Fish Cupcakes!


I linked up on Sweets for a Saturday #45!