A cupcake "masterpiece"

Our good friend, Amy Boelk, always makes the coolest cupcakes and cakes (http://www.amystreats.blogspot.com/). She has this special cupcake book that she uses. Well last night was her birthday and our house group meeting for church. I got her husband to hijack the book for me and I was going to attempt to make her a masterpiece for her birthday. I had to go all over town looking for the ingredients, had to improvise in the end and my finished project looks nothing like this picture but it was a fun day and I think she appreciated the attempt.

here is the picture from the book

it called for chocolate covered sunflower seeds of different colors (which i never ended up using) which are carried in only one store in town and strawberry pirouette cookies which pepperidge farm no longer makes. and 5 bright colors of cupcake wrappers which are not available anywhere. let the improvisation begin. here are the ingredients i started out with.
good looking cupcakes out of the oven
the beginning of the colored candy sorting

i ended up using colored twizzlers on wooden skewers for the candles that matched the candies of that layer

frosted and ready to go for assembly

i assembled it at our friends' house- it was really 'lean-y'

with some of the candles on it. the flames are banana runts with orange frosting around them to look like a flame- but they ended up looking kind of phallic

i put the red ones around the base because I had extra and because it made it look less lopsided

so this is the final outcome. nothing like the picture but made with love and determination

we ended up celebrating 4 birthdays last night. so Happy Birthday Cory, Bryan, Amy and Jenn- this lopsided cupcake 'masterpiece' is for you.