Baby Sea Turtle Cupcakes

Last year, my mother-in-law was throwing a baby shower and wanted me to make the dessert.  She didn't know if the baby was going to be a boy or a girl, and the information she gave me was, "she loves sea turtles."  I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to make, and finally, with the help of Adam, I came up with the idea to have a mommy sea turtle cake, and baby sea turtle cupcakes.

This was before my blogging days, so I don't have pictures of the whole process, but I will try to be descriptive.

Since this is Cupcake Month, I am going to focus on the cupcake turtles.  The first thing I did was bake some chocolate cupcakes using my basic recipe.  After letting them cool, I cut the tops off all the cupcakes (this would be a great opportunity for making whoopie pies since you don't use the tops for the cupcakes).  I filled the cupcakes with a raspberry buttercream, but that is not necessary for the recipe.

At this point, I began working with the cupcakes one at a time.  To make the turtle shell/body, I turned the cupcake bottom upside-down and frosted the top.  I colored some fondant a light green, and covered the cupcake (click here for more information about food coloring, and here for a post about covering cakes with fondant).  If you are doing this at home, you should have a small round shape like a shell that is a solid light green color. 

The next thing I did was make the diapers.  I cut a circle of white fondant, then cut it in half, then cut two slits for the diaper.  Place the straight edge along the bottom of the cupcake and wrap around.  Then fold the diaper down, folding the sides first, then the middle over the sides.

I put Adam in charge of limbs.  He rolled small logs of light green fondant into arms and legs.  He bent the arms to make them the shape of a sea turtle arm.  Adam made the heads by covering a Reese's egg with light green fondant.

We made the finishing touches by cutting various sized circles out of dark green fondant to cover the shell.  The head was finished by adding eyes (small white circles of fondant with a black food coloring dot) and a pacifier.  I bought the small candy pacifiers, and Adam cut off the part that goes in a mouth.  We used a bit of frosting to stick the pacifier on the mouth of the turtle.  Since we didn't know the gender of the baby, we added some blue ones for boys.

And some pink ones for girls.

Then placed them on this three tier dessert stand.