Monkey Cupcakes!

I know it's ridiculous, but I seriously can't move on with my life tonight until I post these photos. There's a monkey-themed baby shower tomorrow at work, so for weeks I've been scheming up how to get some cute monkey faces on the cupcakes without too much work (that is, less work than the fondant sculpting involved in this video).

I am so ecstatic that they turned out well with freehand piping; I found instructions on this website, and just went for it with cream cheese frosting on Mom's Carrot Cake (takes 20 minutes to bake the cupcake version). I am never able to execute piping with precision, but in this case that works out well - each face is different, in happy, quirky, childish ways.

Even the mud-colored icing I accidentally made (that kind of stuff always, always happens in cake decorating) came in hand for the eyes and mouths. I'm freezing the rest for the next monkeys...or whatever...that I make.

And here's one for my friend who had a bad day today: I'm going to save this guy for you to eat!

I had a brief moment of panic after making these when I thought "What if the mother thinks that I've tried to put baby faces on the cupcakes, but they just turned out ugly???" But then I remembered that it was the mother who chose the monkey theme...and I decided that I would make a "Monkey Cupcake" sign just to make sure all was understood.

Even if they would make pretty ugly babies, they are CUTE monkeys!

I hope you enjoyed this happy little album of crazy monkeys!