"The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog" Cupcakes

It is just terrible that I have not posted a blog since January. I would promise to try to get better at it but I don't want to let you down. I do have some cool projects I am working on that I want to share with you so there may be hope for me yet!

A couple of weeks ago, I picked my daughter up from school and she was beaming with excitement. It was finally her turn to be student of the week. She was actually the last one in her class to have a turn but I was told later by the teachers that being the last kid is a good thing. It means they are patient enough to wait for their turn.

The first project was Bella's all about me page. For this I took out all of my scrapbooking supplies. This is where I am grateful for my craft supply hoarding tendencies. You never know when you are going to need fun paper and letter stickers! We also used some crayons and Bella really enjoyed making a rainbow design for all of the borders. My favorite part about this is when asked if she had one wish what she would wish for, she put Sun and Hugs. That's my girl!

For the rest of the week we needed to send in various things that are Bella's favorites. The "main event" of the week was when I got to go into her class and read them a story. This also entails bringing some sort of snack for the class too. All along Bella knew she wanted me to make cupcakes but we were a little undecided about what book I was going to read. Being the last kid, a lot of her books were already read to the class with the exception of the Pigeon books, by Mo Willems. Those books are pretty much our favorites around here. I like the pigeon because he has so much attitude and it is really fun to bring that out when you are reading them. You can read more about them here: http://www.pigeonpresents.com/

So being the overachiever that I am I decided to make cupcakes that matched the books. Being the last student of the week I felt it was a go big or go home situation. After a consultation with my fellow baker brain stormer, my sister, she sent me a picture of a hot dog made out of candy. It was decided. I would read the 4 pigeon books to the kids, finish with "The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog" and give out the cupcakes!

Here is how I made the "hot dogs". Again I will add that I did not come up with this idea, it was based on a picture I found on flickr. Basically you need circus peanuts, tootsie rolls, icing tinted yellow, and green sour patch kids. It is a pretty easy process. Cut the circus peanut in half, but not all of the way and then work the tootsie roll in. Pipe a little yellow icing to look like mustard, then add cut up green sour patch kids for the "relish". Here is a picture of the "hot dogs" all lined up and ready to be cupcake toppers.

For the cupcakes I made a batch of vanilla and a batch of chocolate. With 26 kids in the class, there is no way around making 48 cupcakes! I just swirled some homemade vanilla butter cream on them and topped each cupcake with a "hot dog". Here is the final product.

I had such a blast reading to the kids. I was a little nervous at first, I am not sure why. But I could tell for Bella it was so amazing to have her mom come in and sit in her teacher's chair and read to her class, even though I embarrassed her when I really got into acting out the pigeon! Here are some photos of us reading to the class. They were scanned so I apologize for the quality. The kids got a kick out of the cupcakes and so did the teachers. Even though right after this I had to rush into work and had 30 minutes to prepare for an impromptu meeting, it was completely worth taking the time out of the day to be there for Bella and also a great excuse to make another creative cupcake!