The Joys of Caking: Under the Sea

If you ever need an event planner, look no farther. No, not me. My friend Hillary is amazing at this stuff. She was in charge of this shower for my sister-in-law and it was probably the best decorated shower I have ever attended! Seriously, she has a gift.

So Hillary asked me to make some cupcakes for the shower. The theme was Under the Sea - a Shellabration. She found these super cute turtle cupcakes on Pinterest.

But I didn't really want to make 48 turtle cupcake toppers. So I decided to do some starfish and shell cupcakes as well.

The shells were easy. I used the Wilton shell candy mold and made sets of light blue, dark blue, green, and "sand" (aka peanut butter flavor) candy shells. They turned out great!

The starfish were also really easy. I used a star cutter and cut out thick orange fondant stars. I used the wrong end of a piping tip to make the smiles. I let the stars dry on the flower drying rack so that they would be slightly curved. For the eyes, I dipped a toothpick into black food coloring and the stuck it into the star.

The turtles were slightly more complicated, but they were very cute.

I used the circle cutters for most of the turtle. The small one made the feet. I just had to cut off one side and reshape them.

I used the large cutter for the blue background and the medium cutter for the head and body. I just made the head smaller.

I used the wrong end of a piping tip to make the smiles. I used gum glue to attach the turtle to the blue background.

Then I added the legs.

I used piping tip 3 and cut the circles in half to make the little spots to go on the turtles back.

I also used a toothpick dipped in black food coloring for the turtles' eyes.

They dried overnight and then I just had to add them to the cupcakes.

I got a new cupcake stand that holds more than my old one and is a platform. So we put brown sugar on it to look like sand and added a few candy shells.