Caterpillar cupcakes - summer

For my nephew's first birthday I wanted to do something on the special side. Courtesy of Wilton's website, this was the only "first birthday" cake/cupcake idea that looked remotely doable, not insanely difficult. Well, as it turns out making caterpillars out of cupcakes is hard! I had to enlist Mark's help as "Oh, I have a lot of time to get this done" turned into "Oh crap, we have to leave in 15 minutes so we can get there on time and I haven't even frosted all the cupcakes yet."

Sadly, Wilton does not tell you where to get licorice that is firm enough to poke into spice drops (sidebar: spice drops are pretty gross--does anyone actually like these?), pliable enough to hang down as legs yet also firm enough to stay up as antennae, and sticky enough to keep the spice drops stuck to the licorice legs. We did our best which means we managed to make one caterpillar.

Looking at the end result of this one, it's all for the best that we only had time to do one. The rest of the cupcakes looked quite lovely and colorful when we didn't force licorice legs and m&m faces into them. Though this little guy looks happy, there seems to be a fine line between cheerful and slightly demonic. These may not be so kid-friendly after all. I urge you to check out the example on Wilton's website, though--adorable!