Tailgate Football Cupcakes

Are you all familiar with Movember? It happens every November; many guys start growing a mo' (moustache = symbol of manliness) and keep it for the whole month in the name of prostate cancer.

In honor of Movember, C&C Cakery is holding The Manly Cupcake Challenge (and has started a donation team), to bring awareness of prostate cancer to the blogosphere. It's a great way for gals like myself to contribute, despite our inability to grow a mo'. The challenge: make a manly cupcake, in flavor or in decoration.

Here's how this cupcake is manly: 1) Beer (flavor), 2) Football, 3) BBQ Grill (meat!), 4) Lack of frilly liners, 5) Matcha (bitterness to tamper down on frosting sweetness), 6) Nature colors, and 7) Fire (the closest I could get to an explosion).

Cool right? I think the grill cookies would also be great for a BBQ or a 4th of July party. And, of course, these cupcakes would be great for the Superbowl, with the footballs decorated with your team's colors. So now that you're acquainted with Movember, if you have to time, read up more about it and donate.

The Manly Cupcake Contest Prize Sponsors: Blush Printables, Hello Hanna, Elise Steven’s Illustration and Design, Taraduff, Miss Kitty Creations, Bella Cupcake Couture, Drama Llama, & My Creative Side.

P.S. My friend mentioned that I should do something school spirit-y in this post, so I made some Cal football cake bites as well :) (see below).

Graveyard Cupcakes

Happy Halloween! Anyone have any fun Halloween plans? Or a cool Halloween costume planned? I celebrated Halloween early with a party on Friday where I served all of these treats that I've been posting about here. It was quite fun, and in case you were wondering, I dressed up as Medusa with a black toga and snakes in my hair.

One of the desserts I served at the party were these Graveyard Cupcakes. The cool thing about these is that this decoration method can basically be applied to any cupcake/frosting recipe of your choice. All you need are some chocolate cookie crumbs and the tombstone cookies. I ended up making two types of cupcakes: pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and chocolate peanut butter cup cupcakes with peanut butter frosting (recipe below).

I wanted the tombstone cookies to look gray like stone, so I thought to make a black sesame shortbread cookie decorated with a bit of melted chocolate. And to make them easier to prepare, I sliced them from a log rather than cut them all out individually. I was also inspired by those kiddy crafts that use cookie crumbs as dirt, like potted flower cakes or dirt & worms. It turned out quite well with these cupcakes.