Ever since I was a little girl we have celebrated birthdays with Wilton cakes.  You know those formed shaped cakes that you decorate with a star shaped cake tip.  I currently have three tubs full of Wilton cake tins in all sorts of shapes and sizes. When I started having children I started doing Wilton cakes for my own children.  Somehow though, my children are looking for something different.  This year Brian wanted brownies and Bryce decided....well, let's be honest...I decided to try something different for Bryce and he complied.

Last Christmas, my mother gave me a book on decorating cupcakes.  The cupcakes are very creative and being the artsy, craftsy person that I am decided that this could be a new creative outlet for me.  For Bryce's birthday I decided to make these really cool shark cupcakes.

Here is a picture from the book.  Aren't they so cool!! I mean who wanted to make something as cool as that?!

I started off by making the cupcakes from scratch.  I mean...really from scratch.. like I made my own buttermilk from vinegar and milk and my own unsweetened chocolate from butter and cocoa.  I scratched my way to some delicious chocolate cupcakes.  I even made my own chocolate wafer cookies.  The book called for chocolate wafer cookies for the shark fins but I couldn't find any.  My creative mind said, "Hey, no problem. Just make some sugar cookies and cut them to the shape of shark fins."  So while I was looking up the recipe for sugar cookies I found one for chocolate wafer cookies.  Now this recipe must have been written by an elderly lady in the church.  I say that because as I got knee deep into the mixing process I came across this line "add as much flour as you need to make a dough."  What is that?!  What kind of dough?  Soft dough?  thick dough?  How doughy is cookie dough?  Then I realized there was no baking instructions.  No temp. No time.  Great now I get to guess again.  Who let this woman submit a recipe to this book?  Miracle of miracles they turned out ok and from there I was able to make the fins.  The only thing I didn't make was the twinkies. 

The theory behind these cupcakes was that you make your cupcake then cut your twinkie in the shape of a shark, insert the fin, and glue to top of cupcake with icing.  Once they are assembled freeze your cupcakes.

Since I made my fins from scratch they were too thick to insert into the twinkies and so I glued them on with icing as well.

Now so far so good.  Everything looks good and like it might actually turn out.  This is where everything goes south.

Instead of purchasing tubs of frosting, I made my own buttercream frosting.  This  appears to have been my downfall.  The idea in this step is to melt your grey frosting in a wide, glass, cup then dip your frozen twinkie/cupcake into the melted frosting which will adhere itshelf  to the twinkie making it look like a shark rising out of the cupcake.

Well, that is the theory anyway.  What happened for me was that the icing was so heavy that it ripped off the fin and then the whole twinkie was sucked off.  I eventually decided to place my twinkie on a plate and poured the melted frosting on top letting it cover the twinkie and fin.  I then laid my frosted twinkie on top of the cupcake.

Mini chocolate chips made up the eyes, fruit rollup mouths, and icing teeth finished out the shark.  Another thing, my frosting was light grey when I started but every time I nuked it to melt it down (it thickened  up as soon as it began to cool) it got darker and darker.  After four sharks I gave up. 

I used a lot of blue icing to make it look like the sharks were creating a lot of waves.  You know, like in Jaws!! 

Regardless of the mess, the kids enjoyed them.