Puppy and Kitten Love: Mini Cupcakes

“A true friend leaves paw prints on your heart.”
Aww..so true! Gotta love puppies and kittens. What better way to honor them than cutie mini cupcakes? Here’s a how-to:
Puppies:
Your favorite mini cupcake recipe (You can try a chocolate one, or even a gluten-free option.)
Wilton candy eyeballs – small
Wilton candy eyeballs – large
Airheads- cherry flavor
Black edible ink pen
Wilton black candy drops
White sparkling sugar
Cream cheese frosting -white
Kittens:
White chocolate chips
Pink candy sprinkle hearts
White and pink jimmies (sprinkles)
Black wilton rainbow chip crunch sprinkles or mini dark choco chips
White sparkling sugar
Cream cheese frosting –white
Directions
Place a handful amount of the white sparkling sugar in a shallow bowl. For both cupcakes, once cooled to room temperature, use your round piping tip, I used 1a – to pipe little round blobs of frosting onto the cupcakes. It’s ok if it’s not too neat. Then go ahead and dip them into the sugar and push down lightly so that they are evenly covered. Next, we decorate!
The puppies: Take the mini eyeball candies and use your edible ink marker to make the black spots larger so you get big puppy dog eyes. Dab some frosting with a toothpick on the backs, and place these on the cupcakes. Next take one big eyeball, place some frosting on the back, and place it in the middle so that it is the snout. Place frosting on the back of two black candy drops and attach them to the sides for floppy looking ears. (By the way, if you can’t get these candies, you can also use little cylindrical black licorice pieces that you can get at a candy store in a licorice assortment.) Next you’ll take a tiny bit of airhead in your hand and shape it into a little tongue, rounded on one side. Dab some frosting on the non-rounded side and place it under the large eyeball (snout), to the side. Now you have a puppy!
The kittens: Place some frosting on the back of the black rainbow chip crunch (or mini dark choco chips, tips facing down) and attach to the cupcake as eyes. Dab frosting on one side of the white choc chips and place on the cupcakes as ears, with pointy side facing up as you see here in the photos. Grab the pink sprinkle hearts, dab some frosting on, and place them under the eyes for the little pink nose. Use three white jimmies on either side of the nose as the whiskers. Use three pink jimmies to create the mouth – one coming down from the nose, and two making a little smile as seen here. You have kittens!
That’s it! Now if you have an animal themed party to go to, you can make these 🙂