If this oven's a-rockin'...: Shark Cupcakes

For my son's fourth Birthday, I made the Shark Cupcakes (from the Hello, Cupcake book)...

Apparently, since the cupcakes were so frustrating to make, I forgot to photograph the process.... (So, most of my pictures are of the finished product.)
Here are the mini-doughnuts that I made into life-preservers. The book called for plain mini-doughnuts that were supposed to be dipped in white melted icing. I just skipped that step & bought powdered mini-doughnuts. Then I cut narrow strips of red fruit-by-the-foot and wrapped three around each doughnut. The strips were easily fastened together with a tiny drop of water to adhere the fruit-by-the-foot to itself.

I added the life-preservers to blue frosted cupcakes. To get that color blue, I used Wilton coloring (in royal blue, I think). For a couple of the preservers, I used a small fork to take a chunk out of it - like a shark bite.

Some of the other cupcakes were topped with a school of Swedish Fish.

When I iced the cupcakes, I used the small spatula to make waves on top.

The hard part of making these cupcakes was the sharks. They were made mostly of a Twinkie. First I had to cut part of the Twinkie off at an angle- that was the side of the Twinkie that would be attached to the cupcake. The other end of the Twinkie I trimmed to look like the shark's snout. I cut a slice into the top of the Twinkie and shoved the piece of a Famous Chocolate Wafer to make the dorsal fin. Then I attached the trimmed Twinkie to the iced cupcake with extra icing & popped it into the freezer for about 15 minutes.

Next, I had to melt some grey-tinted icing in the microwave & dip the Twinkie. This was a challenge... I had to get the icing at the right consistency to coat the shark. Some of my sharks came off of the cupcake, some of the icing wasn't warmed enough, but then if I warmed it too long, it would separate.

The sharks mouths were made of a piece of fruit-by-the-foot that I cut into an oval shape. His fins & teeth are just icing. And his eyes are a mini chocolate chip.

As you can see in the above picture, my sharks were too top heavy. I don't think I cut enough off of the Twinkie, so they were hanging too much off of the cupcake & falling over. (Hence the propped up shark -with a toothpick.)

Here's a shot of some cupcakes in the handy-dandy new holder that my Aunt Sue & Hap just recently sent me! It worked really well for transporting some of the 30 cupcakes that I took to the party.