Muppet Cupcakes

My sweet girl is turning 11 tomorrow -- I can hardly stand it! She is a huge fan of The Muppets and asked for a Muppets cake for her birthday. I checked with our grocery store which has all sorts of character cakes -- no Muppets! I checked with the party store to see if they had anything -- still no luck! I thought about making a cake and trying to do something Muppet-related, but she's having 2 little parties tomorrow -- a brunch party at 11:00am with Grandpa & Gramby, and a bowling party with 3 of her girlfriends at 1:30pm.

I didn't want to make 2 different cakes, and I didn't want to serve the same cake twice! So cupcakes it was! I decided to do my interpretation of the 3 main Muppet characters -- Kermit, Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear. I made chocolate cupcakes (her favorite) and let them cool. Then I used 2 containers of vanilla frosting and mixed 3 main colors -- light green for Kermit, pink for Miss Piggy, and an orange color for Fozzie -- he's kind of a brown/orange -- the color I made looked pretty close to the picture that I was using for reference. I had food coloring at home, so I bought the frosting and I bought 1 tube of black decorating frosting ($2?) and I used a thin decorating tip on the end (a 4-pack cost me $2 - $3 and I can wash and reuse them). I frosted the cupcakes with the main color -- 8 of each character. Then using a plastic sandwich bag as a pastry bag, I had some plain vanilla frosting that I squeezed out of a tiny hole in the corner. This is how I made the eyes -- oval for Kermit and Miss Piggy and round for Fozzie. I took another sandwich bag and put a little vanilla frosting with some blue food coloring to make Miss Piggy's eyes. Then I took the black tube of frosting and put in the details on all of their eyes -- eyeliner for Miss Piggy, the "-+-" kind of symbol on Kermits eyes, and then just big round pupils for Fozzie. I'm certainly no artist, but it worked in a pinch and I think these came out cute. And most importantly, my girl LOVES them! She told me that the Kermit, in particular were the best looking cupcakes she's ever seen (she's flattering me, I know, but it's super sweet)!

I bought some green napkins and plates and ordered some balloons in green, pink, and orange to help make her feel like she's having a Muppets party. Actually, even though I couldn't find any character party supplies, I think it's a great compromise and probably a "cool" 11-year-old version of a Muppets party! ;)