Mini Tutorial: Ziploc Baggie Baby Cake and Cupcakes - No decorating supplies but the colors needed

I was asked to make cupcakes for a baby shower at church last week. It was for three new moms at once, so it had to be kind of gender neutral. I called up my sister-in-law who makes the most awesome cupcakes ever, and she gave me a great idea...which it turned out I didn't have the stuff for. We're moving in December and it turns out I already packed almost all of my cake decorating stuff.

So I got on line to this site to look for any other ideas. (This is also where I got inspiration for Firecracker's last birthday cake...maybe I'll blog about that later.) I combined the general concept of Baby "03" with some ideas from their cupcake page, and ended up with this...

So here's what I did...

Materials: 1 or more batches of cake/cupcake batter, 1 batch of frosting, food coloring (I use Wilton gels), small ziploc baggies, baby pacifier, small bowls and spoons for mixing frosting with colors, oven safe mixing bowl (not the same one you mix the batter in), cupcake papers and tins.

1. Make your batter. Put about 1/2 of one batch of batter into an oven safe mixing bowl sprayed with non-stick spray. Use the rest of your batter to make cupcakes. Bake. 2. When done, remove from oven and after cooling for a few minutes put cake on cooling rack. Cool thoroughly.

3. Make your frosting. I used cream cheese frosting because that's what went best with the carrot cake and coconut cupcakes I'd made. You can use almost any kind of frosting you want. The cream cheese was a little softer than typical buttercream, but it worked just fine.

4. I divided out about 1/3 of the frosting, to use for the details and made the rest skin tone. I looked up skin-tone on the internet and everyone recommended using Wilton Copper color for it...only thing was...I don't have copper color. Instead, I used toothpicks to add just a touch of color at a time. I started with just a touch of pink...and it turned it pinker than I wanted right off. Then I used small touches of brown to tone it down. I was a bit surprised at how much brown it took to subdue the pink, considering how little pink I'd added...but that's it...a touch of pink and a few touches of brown. Frost the cake and cupcakes with the skin tone and put some more of the frosting into a ziploc baggie and cut the tip off a corner.

5. In small bowls, I mixed up the dark brown, blue, and purple (instead of pink...cause my kids' favorite color is purple...and to be different) for the details. I put these into small ziploc baggies and just barely cut the tip off one of the corners, so there was a very small opening. (You can always cut it bigger if you need to, but to go smaller, you have to start out with a new bag.)

6. Decorate the cupcakes first, since their details are smaller. I just looked at my inspiration pictures and copied. For the open mouths, I outlined the mouths and then filled them in with frosting and used a butter knife to smooth it out and finish filling it in. I did the eyes and mouths in brown and cheeks and noses in skin tone. (If I had it to do over again, I might have made the cheeks and noses, just a touch more pink, but that would have been one more step and it was getting late.) After I'd done the "cute" cupcakes to go on the same tray as the cake, I did the rest with simpler mouths, so they went faster.

7. Use a butter knife to dig a hole for the pacifier nipple, and put the pacifier on the cake.

8. Cut the holes in the ziploc baggies a little bigger and add the details to the cake...and you're done!!!

If you decide to make these, I'd love to see them!