how to make bumblebee cupcakes

It’s a sweet, buzzy-bee cupcake New For Us Friday this week, thanks to Cora!

Our Cora turned the big-numero quatro this week, and for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks she’s been asking for a bumblebee birthday party.

She knew exactly what she wanted: three friends for a playdate, bumblebee wands, bumblebee games, and bumblebee cupcakes. Easy enough!

So do you want to know how to make bumblebee cupcakes? Today I’m sharing how we turned a springtime staple–marshmallow Peeps!–into a super-cute bumblebee cupcake.

Here’s the sugary,  yellowy-awesome, skinny:

• Bumblebee Cupcakes: We’ve been on the lookout for bumblebee cupcake how-to’s for several months now.  And even though I was lucky enough to pick up one of those impulse-item cookbooks at the grocery store weeks ago that included a bumblebee cupcake, what I realized is that sometimes it’s easier to come up with something on our own.

We couldn’t find the gumdrops we needed for their bumblebee anywhere. Any. Where.

Maddy, Owen, and I try to figure out how to make bumblebee cupcakes. . .

. . . without any of the items the recipe called for.

Our first attempt at our own bumblebee: it looked like a bunny wearing a bee costume and angel wings.

We headed to the store and grabbed a bunch of candies that we thought could possibly work for our bumblebee cupcakes, and Maddy, Owen, and I got to work while Cora was at swim lessons with her daddy.

We tried and tried and tried again.

Then Maddy suggested we cut off the bunny ears.  And this was a turning point in our bee-creation. Owen was verrry adamant about her not making the heads into points–she needed to make sure the bee heads were still round.   We were one step closer to our bumblebee! Now for the wings. . .

Here she is–our very own bumblebee! (We hadn’t added the stinger yet!)

We flipped the bunny over, and with its ears cut off, it much more closely resembled a bumblebee.

We experimented with several types of wings–pretzels, white chocolate squares, gum drop fruit slices, and Mike n’ Ikes. The winner?  Gum drop fruit slices! But the round side had to be on the outside, and the ruffly edges had to be facing up–that way they looked like bumblebee wings!

Eyes? Mini chocolate chips, point down, stuck inside a teeny slit on the Peep. Stripes? Black icing in the tube–not gel but the regular kind. Antennae? Black icing. Stinger? Mini chocolate chip with point facing down.

Before we knew it, Maddy, Owen, and I hit a groove: Maddy (very carefully!) cut off bunny ears; I placed bumblebee bodies on cupcakes and made stripes; and Owen added eyes and wings. Owen’s jobs were tough–he had to carefully add mini-chocolate chips into teeny-tiny slits I created on the head,  and the point had to be stuck inside. And the wings had to match; we decided that it would be wonderful if our bumblebees had a wide range of wing colors. But they also had to have frilly sides up. He rocked it.

Our bumblebee cupcakes were totally adorable.

  We even made baby bumblebees! The babies were made with bunny ears–and we added Mike n’ Ikes as wings.  They were too tiny to have eyes, so I added stripes and antennae, and they were ready to fly!

Two baby bumblebees

They were hardly objects of perfection–but that wasn’t the point. Each one was a little different in its own way–stripes too thick, eye crooked, wing backwards, antenna twisted–but they were still so cute buzzing around the birthday table. And Cora was over the moon. That’s all that matters.

She danced crazy around the kitchen, wet hair and tired legs from swim lessons when she saw them. Woo-hoo!

(And Maddy and Owen were so proud that they created them–way to go, Maddy and O!) I’m looking forward to sharing the rest of her bumblebee birthday surprises in the next few days: games, wands, pens, and flower barrettes!

Want to throw a seriously awesome bumblebee birthday? Click below: