Birthday Cupcakes, Duck Hunter Cupcakes, and a Crown Cake

We've had a lot of birthdays in our family over the last month.  Which means I've been doing some baking. 

My cousin's birthday was this past week and we had a joint party for her and my husband whose birthday is this coming week. 

For her, I made two tiered cupcakes with a candle made from a chocolate covered pretzel. 

For my duck hunting husband, I made cupcakes with camoflauge icing and a sugar cookie mallard on top.

My children call their grandmother Queenie (cute, right? they came up with that on their own...) so for her birthday, I made a crown fit for a Queen...

Just thought I'd share these with you...they were fun!

High Heel Shoe Cupcakes

My sister's birthday was last weekend and I wanted to do something cute to surprise her.  I found an adorable idea for cupcakes that look like high heeled shoes in a cupcake book I recently got as a gift.  They were a little time consuming, as each pair had a different design (we can't have two pairs of the same shoes, now can we?).  Totally worth the time in the end because they turned out pretty awesome. 

There were 9 pairs in total.  The heel is made from those Pepperidge Farm pirouttes cookies and the flat part is a graham cracker coated in white chocolate.  Being the first time I did these, some are a little messy, but I figured out some things to do differently next time to keep them neater.

The Dorothy shoe...

The Spring Flower... (sorry for the blurry picture)

The wedding shoe...

The Green Bay Packer shoe (she loves Green Bay...)

This one has no theme or name...the black swirly shoe maybe?

The leopard print shoe...(the cupcake holder is pink leopard but you can't see it very well.  I should've taken better pictures!)  Lesson learned on this shoe - I dipped the heel in dark chocolate but quickly realized that at room temperature it kept trying to slide right out from under the rest of the shoe.  Next time I wont be dipping any heels. 

The zebra shoe, which kinda doesn't look like zebra print because I got the icing on too thick.  Lesson learned for next time...

The Zeta shoe (my sister was in Zeta and their color is turquoise).

And lastly, another shoe with no name.  This was my daughter Lilly's favorite.  The bow is made from a stick of gum :).

So there you have it...edible shoes.  Pretty cute, huh?