Minion Birthday

So, my friend K's little girl turned two yesterday. Cutest little kiddo ever. She's using her manners, with a little prompting, she enjoys helping in the garden and around the house (I can't tell you how many times I've turned around to find her 'sweeping' the kitchen floor, or 'dusting' something), and will talk up a storm for you.

This adorable little blue eyed, blond curls of a little American Girl doll also LOVES minions. Like OMG every other word it seems is Minion. So for the birthday girl, her Momma and I decided I would make Minion cupcakes. I was super stoked, plus it gave me an excuse to buy a mini cupcake tin (everyone needs one those right?)

I looked up a few ideas online, and found pictures of people using Twinkies, and marshmallows, all sorts of different frostings, or fondant, and some painted on eyes, or used Smarties, or something else. I finally settled on how I wanted to put everything together, and took inventory for what I already had, and K and I headed off to the store.

I used a basic butter cream frosting, and about a half batch of the batter I used for K's birthday cupcakes last December. Plus, marshmallows, chocolate, candy eyes, black painting icing and sprinkles.

I started off by melting the chocolate, but of course I couldn't use my double boiler, because I used it with all sorts of fragrances and other things making lotions and candles last year, and yea well, didn't wanna risk it. No worries, we'll make this work the way my Momma taught me. A pan, and a bowl.

*DISCLAIMER* I don't really consider these candies as chocolates, but I can never get white chocolate to melt properly so I went with these.

Anywhoo....once it was all melted down, I added a splash of oil, and a pinch of vanilla, and started prepping the marshmallows. I found that if you just stick a toothpick in them, they pull off and get stuck in the chocolate, so I dipped the toothpick into the chocolate a little, then shoved it into my marshmallow, let it cool, and THEN dipped the marshmallow. Also...don't cover the whole marshmallow, because you'll have nothing to hold later without melting chocolate, and it makes it tricky getting the tooth pic out. Unless you want an excuse to eat half of your minions...then go ahead.

I used a styrofoam circle to hold the minions while they were cooling and drying, popping them in the fridge to hurry the process along since I'm not all THAT patient of a person.

How minions are born

Once I had all my Minions dipped, eyed, and haired, I started making cupcakes, and icing. I used Wilton Royal blue coloring to get the batter and icing as close to the shade of blue as their overalls and I could. 

Yay! First batch in mini cupcake tray!!!

After everything had cooled, and I took a break for dinner, I sat down and tried to draw the goggles and mouths on with a food writer pen. Thanks to the waxy nature of the chocolate, the pen tip just gummed up and didn't work for more than a tiny little mark that was REALLY faint any way. 

I tried to Google home made edible ink...and kept finding all these really cool ideas for making ink out of beets, and dryer lint, and walnuts, and all sorts of things, but not really what I was I going for. So I thought, well I have the black Wilton gel coloring, but it's too thick to paint on, so I'll try to water it down. Well that didn't work well, because the waxy-ness of the chocolate just had the water beading up and not drying. In the words of the minions "well, poop". 

I'm not sure what made me think of it, but I tried mixing some powdered sugar into the black water until it was about the consistency of an acrylic paint. Found my detail paint brush that I bought because I wanted to paint stemware, but never got around to it. I proceeded to paint, every minion's goggles, and mouths by hand, and assemble the cupcakes, while watching an outrageous comedy about a haunted house. 

MINIONS!!!!

WOW did they turn out pretty well! Some of them were a little wonky, some looked a little messed up, but overall, I had my own army of minions sitting on my coffee table.

The birthday girl, was so excited when she saw the minions that it didn't take her more than 5 minutes to snag one (after being told to wait) when no one was looking. K and I were in her kitchen getting dishes ready to set out and heard her say "I ate it". K and I looked at each other wondering what she was eating, and go into the other room to see this:

One very happy, Minion demolishing, birthday girl. Guess which one she snagged? The one I made with little piped stars on it so we could put her star candles in it for her to blow out....So we had to put the candles in a different one, but thankfully I had more cupcakes than minions.

Now that I've seen Despicable Me 2, I'm going to have to figure out how to do the new minions. Thinking, of cotton candy for the hair, and coconut for the teeth. If I ever actually make them, that is. I think I'm slightly minion-ed out for the time being. But we had one happy little birthday girl!