Sunflower Cupcakes

I had so much fun making these cupcakes with my children I thought I would share how we made them.  They turned out very well considering that the little guys did much of the work!

First you need to make marshmallow fondant.  This was so easy and fun - like edible play doh.  Even if all you do is make this it is so worth it as a fun activity.  Here is the recipe I followed:http://seddy5.typepad.com/blog/2010/05/how-to-make-marshmallow-fondant.html

and here is what our fondant looked like

 Next we took the green fondant and rolled it out like you would cookie dough.  The only difference is that you should use powdered sugar, not flour, on the rolling surface to reduce sticking.  We rolled this out to about 1/8 of an inch think.

 Then I used a round cookie cutter to cut out circles like this (The chocolate sprinkles in the picture were put on a little early by an overly excited child!).

 Next we rolled out the yellow fondant and used a fluted cookie cutter to cut a shape just a little smaller than the green circle.  After those were cut we used a smaller cutter to cut out the center.

 Then we placed the yellow pieces on top of the green.

After that I cut out a leaf shape from the green fondant and used the tip of a knife to create some detail.

To finish off the toppers the leaves were tucked under the yellow fondant circle and chocolate sprinkles were poured into the hole in the center of the yellow fondant.

While we made the toppers the cupcakes were cooking.  I purchased mini terra cotta pots at Michaels and washed them.  Then I placed them in a muffin tin and plugged the bottom with aluminum foil.  We buttered and flowered the pots before pouring cupcake mix in

 After the cupcakes cooled the toppers were placed on the sunflower pots and voila, easy adorable cupcakes that traveled very well!

Crayon Making

I have been saving broken crayons for as long as I can remember.  On a rainy day we finally got around to making new out of the old.  It was very easy and fun and I think they would make cute party favors.  Here is how we did it:

First we sorted all of our old crayons by color

 Then we removed the wrappers (this took awhile but everyone in the family helped out)

 Next we put the peeled crayons into a tin can

 The can was placed in a pot with water (filled to cover the bottom 1/4 of the can)

 We brought the water to a boil and kept an eye on the melting crayons.  The time it will take depends on how many crayons you have in the can.

 Once everything was melted we removed the can from the pot (using tongs) and poured the melted wax into a muffin tin

 Voila, new crayons!

Can't wait to try different molds next time