Bunny Cupcakes

It's been ages since I've decided to tackle any sort of baking/craft/holiday project beyond the classic sugar cookies at Christmastime. I used to be the mom who made elaborate cakes for all the kid's birthdays, until we discovered that no one in our house really likes cake... But when I saw these bunny cupcakes in a recent copy of Woman's Day magazine, I knew I wanted to give them a try.

We started with simple chocolate cupcakes - a Weight Watchers recipe made with a devils food cake mix and 12 oz. of diet soda. The original recipe calls for cola, but I had some diet lemon lime soda in the fridge... you don't add anything else. Just cake mix and diet soda. And guess what? It makes the fudgiest, yummiest cupcakes out there. I made these the other day with the yummy frosting I linked to awhile back... best cupcakes EVER!For the bunnies though, I decided to go with simple canned frosting. We made the ears by cutting large marshmallows in half and then dipping the sticky sides into pink decorating sugar. Aren't they cute?From there, everyone sort of took their own path, making some with coconut fur and some without. The magazine said to use thin black licorice for the whiskers but I couldn't find any at the store, so we improvised with pretzel sticks. They were a little thick for whiskers, but they worked.My nephew Spencer and his girlfriend Annie were visiting and helped with the bunny making. Spence thought we needed to be ethnically diverse, and created this little brown bunny.

We ended up with lots of different bunnies - some with coconut whiskers, some with one blue eye and one green - even one with weird little green ears cut off a poor neighboring Peep.
I guess I need to dive into more fun projects like this with the kids... I mistakenly assume sometimes that they're too old for this stuff. We had a blast with our bunny cupcakes... and I feel like the best mom ever tucking these adorable treats into the kids' lunches this week.

I think bunny cupcakes may be a new holiday tradition...