I love cupcakes, the main reason is that one serving of your average cake is 1/12 of a cake and you can make 24 cupcakes out of one cake recipe. So if you eat one cup cake, you eat ½ of a serving of cake. You enjoy your cake, yet get half the cake calories. That’s a win-win situation. I also like to decorate them as long as I don’t need a pastry bag to make it happen. I was looking for something to please my Mother who collects butterflies. I found a butterfly cupcake here: http://www.marthastewart.com/266904/butterfly-cupcakes?czone, but I’m not Martha Stewart, so I will make it my way. So here we go.

Step 1:

Supplies:
Cupcake (whatever kind you want)
Frosting (again whatever kind you want)
Pretzels (one for each wing, two wings for each butterfly)
Hard candy (I use Life Savers, although I have make sucker candy and used it before)
Plastic bags
Hammer
Small candies: Jellybeans, M & M’s, licorice nibs, etc., etc., etc.
Scissors
Knife
Foil
Cooking spray
Cookie Sheet

Step 2:

Preheat oven to 225°. Line the cookie sheet with foil and spray the foil with cooking spray. Put the pretzels baked side down on the foil, making sets like wings.

Step 3:

Put Life Savers, one per one empty space in the pretzel, all of one color, in a double lined plastic bag.

Step 4:

Take you hammer and smash them to smithereens.

Step 5:

Use a spoon and fill the empty hole on one wing with the smashed hard candy. Fill the mirror hole on the other wing with the same color.

Step 6:

Repeat with a second color and a different set of holes, and then a third color, and the final set of holes.

Step 7:

Put the pan with the butterfly wings into the 225° oven for 15-18 minutes, or until all the smashed candy pieces have melted together into a solid sheet. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Step 8:

Frost you cupcake. Put the set of wings at an angle (forming a V) in the center of the cupcake. You may put a piece candy under each wing to help prop it into place.

Step 9:

For the body parts of the butterfly, I cut off of the rounded tops of 3 black Jelly beans and placed them between the two wings. I cut some very small strips of a black licorice nibs to make the antenna of the butterfly (you could use black shoe lace licorice). I stuck them in the end I had decided was the head.

Step 10:

Well your butterfly cupcake is done. Isn’t it lovely? Enjoy.

Introduction: How to Decorate a Butterfly Cupcake