Gloverly Cupcakes

Last weekend it was my Grandma’s birthday. She loves knitting so when I saw these in one of the Hello Cupcake! books I knew I had to make them for her. I thought they would be fairly quick to make and decorate, and they were. However, I didn’t quite leave enough time for th cakes to cool down before I had to ice them so I ended up icing them while they were still warm – not something I would recommend!

I made the labels using paint and then printed them off. I made two different sizes – first I made the smaller ones and then decided that they might the wrong way up so I attempted to turn them around but then they ended up bigger. It worked out quite well in the end – the smaller ones fitted two cupcakes in perfectly and I was able to stand them upright, whilst the larger ones had a gap in the middle between the cupcakes so I lay them on their side.

I wanted the knitting needles to be edible but in the end they weren’t – the supermarket didn’t have what I wanted so I ended up covering some cake pop sticks with white chocolate and then stuck a white chocolate covered mini marshmallow on the end of each one.
To make the individual balls of wool I spread a small amount of buttercream over the top of each cupcake, just to cover it. I then filled a piping bag, with a small, plain nozzle attached, with the buttercream and piped lines across the cupcake. After the top had been covered with lines going one way, I turned the cupcake by 90 degrees and started piping lines, but not the whole way over the top so thy you could still the lines going the other way.
The cupcakes for the larger balls were decorated by spreading a ring of buttercream around the top of the cupcake and then piping lines of icing over the top.
Finally, to finish the board off I used the left over blue icing to pipe “happy birthday” and then to make it look like it was written in wool I placed two of the blue balls of wool next to it.