Cupcake Calender- March 2011 Ducks

So for the March Cupcake Calender Challenge it was some cute little yellow ducks.  Emily and I had the day off and she invited me over so we could colaborate on a little cupcake making sunday funday.  I thought these were going to be failry difficult to make and pondered how they got the look of a smooth outer layer of frosting.  I thought I might have to do some fondont work which I have not yet done so I got to studing the way they did it in the book.  YES!!! The book actually has some directions that are not available in just the calander!

Ok, so you know I went out and purchased the book immediatly after leaving Emily’s house.  I actaully bought both books so I may have to contuine the challenge after the year to include every cupcake in the book!  YAY.     The good thing about the cupcake colabroation is the tasks are all split between 2 people and this project flew by. Emily had made some cupcakes in the morning so when I got there they were already cooled and ready to go.

 I started off by making the ducks beaks and feet out of orange starburst.

We had stopped of at Dunks for some munchkins to make into duck heads but  when we got home we realized that they gave us the WRONG FRIGGIN BAG!  How the heck are we gonna make 6 duck heads out of a lowfat bluberry muffin? 

Emily came up with a great idea to make them our of rice crispy treats and since we had bought some marshmeel for the tails she jumped on that task.

She went ahead and started dipping the rice crispy heads into the frosting trying to get a smooth look.  I think they had 3 or 4 layers of frosting on them!

While she was dunking the heads I got the cupcakes frosted and the little tails cut. 

As soon as I took out my camera for this project I realized my battery was dieing so Emily and I took turns also taking some pictures of each others tasks.   Her camera is truly amazing.

She stuck a few toothpicks in the head that helpd it hold to the cupcake and then I went around the base of the neck with more frosting for more support. 

Now that the heads were on we needed to dunk these little suckers unto the frosting without losing any parts.  It actaully went smoother than we thought.  I think Em held her breath throught the 1st one.

We threw them all into the freezer to let the 1st layer set.

Then we took them for another bird bath of frosting.  I think they all go double dunked.  Then we attached the beaks and feet to the wet 2nd layer.  They eyes are mini M&M’s attached with white frosting.

We did a little photo shoot with them and put them on some super cute scapbook paper of water!  hahaaaa

OMG, they are so CUTE!  Not as bad as I thought they were going to be when we 1st started.   We put them against the front of the book to see how we did~ not bad, not bad at all!

.