“I Heart Desserts” Photo Challenge

When I saw the photo challenge for the iheartfaces blog this week, I knew I had to enter!  Recently, my family celebrated the birthdays of my two beautiful children.  My son's 1st Birthday was 8 days before my daughter's 4th Birthday.  So, I decided to have a carnival themed party after seeing the recipe for "popcorn cupcakes" online.  They are very simple, but extremely time consuming to put together.  But, the results were fantastic and everyone loved them!

Here's how to make these awesome treats:

1.  Make your cupcakes as usual.  Cool completely and ice the tops.  Don't overdo it, you want enough icing for the marshmallows to stick, but not too much.

2.  Cut an "x" in the tops of 50,000 (or so it seems!) mini-marshmallows.  Prepare for our fingers to be sticky and to wipe off the blades of your scissors over and over because they'll get sticky, too.  {And, don't try to scrape off the scissors with your finger like I did or you'll have a nice big gash that probably will require stitches.  OUCH! :)}

3.  Press the marshmallows gently into the icing all around the cupcake.  Squish some before putting them on so that they look more like popcorn.  The trick is to make them "poof" up!

4.  Lastly, spray the tops gently with Wilton Color Mist food color spray to get that "buttered" popcorn look.  Drop your whole cupcake into the paper popcorn wrapper and you're ready for the carnival!

Jump on over to see more yummy desserts from the other entries of the photo challenge at: