The Nightmare Before Christmas - Jack Skellington Cupcakes

The last thing I ever thought I'd be making for my 4-year old daughter was Jack Skellington cupcakes. But there I was, at work, dreaming up cupcake ideas. This was during my daughter's 4-month stretch where The Nightmare Before Christmas was her favorite movie ever.

Now, keep in mind, I prefer making cupcakes that ARE something rather than cupcakes with something on top. (For instance, the cupcake is a balloon rather than a cupcake with balloons on top.) So I was thinking, "What is round? I already did a ladybug...Jack's head is round! That would be perfect!"

As soon as I got home, I pulled out some paper and started drawing "cupcake" circles. The first circle was for Jack Skellington. I was pretty happy with the results - especially when my daughter came over to see what I was doing and immediately recognized "Jack". She staked claim on the 1st cupcake I completed.

The hard part was getting the facial features just right. It had to look like "Jack"...not just any ol' skeleton. Once the drawing was done and I had a good idea about the design, I started to make them.

These were very easy to make. The most difficult part was the bat collar (or spider or whatever - my daughter would know). I made that with melted chocolate candy wafers. Melt some wafers til smooth and place in a Ziploc bag. Snip off a tiny bit of the bottom corner and "draw" the collar onto the shiny side of some wax paper. Basically, it is a circle with "wings" coming off it. They don't take long to set, but it's a good idea to do these first.

Ice the cupcakes in white, pipe on the facial features with chocolate icing (because black icing tastes TERRIBLE). I say pipe on the features because it is so much easier than spreading the chocolate around to get the eyes right. If you're making a lot of these, you'll want the simplest way possible.

Add the bat collar to the cupcake (hold it in place with a dab of icing) and you're done! Enjoy!

Kitty Cat Cupcakes

When my daughter finally decided on "The Cat" for her birthday theme (she loves cats) I immediately thought about the cake. Should it be "Hello Kitty"? or "Tom & Jerry" or her beanie baby kittens? or our kittens? or just any cat? What should it look like? White? Black? Calico?

I decided I couldn't make just one cat cake. Cupcakes would do nicely. So here we are. Lots of kitty cat cupcakes. The main cupcakes have cat faces made out of chocolate candy melts and a few of them are an attempt at making cats entirely out of icing. The latter was dreamed up a few days before the party and a search online for something similar brought on ideas for how to go about making them. I thought the icing cats were a complete disaster but the girls (and my husband) thought they turned out great. In fact, they were the first to disappear!

For the chocolate candy cat faces, I first drew a template of the cat face I wanted - simple enough to do quickly with not a lot of details. I placed the picture underneath a sheet of wax paper. Once I had my chocolate candy wafers melted, I put some in a plastic sandwich bag and traced the outline of the picture. You can see a video tutorial on how to do this. Once the chocolate was cooled and set, I filled in the rest with another color of melted candy wafers. After that hardened, I peeled the cat faces off the wax paper and placed them in the refrigerator until I was ready to assemble the cupcakes.

Once the cupcakes were baked and cooled, I iced a large mound of vanilla icing onto each then sprinkled stars on them. I then placed a kitty face upright in each cupcake.

The icing cats were a bit more difficult, and until I perfect them, I think it's best not to share the technique (seeing as how I don't even HAVE a technique for them yet). Just look at the picture and maybe you can visualize what I was trying to achieve. Or, you can see the ones I was trying to model them after on Cupcake Ninja and ooh and ahhh over those. This creative person did an excellent job! I'll just have to find more cake decorating opportunities so I can practice more!

"Prancing Pony" Cake

My niece loves horses and ponies. She collected "My Little Pony" almost as long as my son collected "Power Rangers" (not that he would admit it now days). So, of course, when her birthday came along, I suggested a horse for her cake. She loved it! Especially the mane which is nothing but icing. I was pleased with the results, but felt the muzzle could have been a bit longer.

I had originally planned to post instructions for this cake here but decided against it. Instead, if you want a pony, horse or unicorn cake, see the Unicorn Cake. 


If you still want to make this cake, I suggest improving it by finding a medium sized mixing bowl and a small mixing bowl. Turn them both upside down empty, put them together and see if the sizes will work for your cake. Meaning, can you see it as a horse?


In this case, the larger bowl was much too large for the smaller bowl. Perhaps if I had made 2 smaller bowl cakes to go with the one large cake and extended the muzzle out farther instead of just making it bigger...


Hmmm...I may have to revisit this cake...

Movie Script Cake

My husband, better known as "Dada" by the kids, has another love in his life. Sigh. His other love is writing. Screenwriting, to be specific. What better way to celebrate his birthday than to have a cake shaped like one of his movie scripts.

He was quite pleased with this script...err...this cake. I was quite disappointed...in the cake...not the script. The icing kept wanting to dry before I could get it smooth enough so I spent a LOT of time fussing over it. It still had ridges in it. I would have preferred the cake having corners that were more squared, but the pan had rounded corners. My husband always tells me I am my worst critic - especially when it comes to my cakes - so I figure, even if I don't like it but I can still live with it, everything is fine. Otherwise, the cake itself is very easy to make.

The script cake is a simple 9x13 cake leveled off on top and iced white. The sides have markings to resemble "pages" of the script. The "text" is simple black decorator gel. If you plan on making this, I would recommend skipping the decorator gel. Use black colored icing instead. Gel can get runny. Icing probably wouldn't. Lastly, I placed real (clean) brads along the edge.

I think my main problem with it is the absence of color. That's why I had the shiny foil and bright yellow star cut-outs under the cake. It cake it more of a "Hollywood" feel.

Oh, and FYI, a script is only supposed to have 2 brads in it...not three. A major faux pas, I hear.

Tia had fun with the stars, though...