Oink, oink! One of the orders I’ve done in the last few months was a super-cute one: pink piggies! These were for a little girl’s 4th birthday. The request was, “She is obsessed with anything pink, and dislikes anything not pink….do you get the theme there? Extra points if it is also sparkly – that just blows her mind.”

The mom also sent this link: http://www.parenting.com/article/how-to-make-piggy-birthday-cupcakes

You could just look at that blog and wonder why I’m writing my own, but let’s face it: I have to put my own twist on everything. The Bunneh Twist. We decided on my double chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bunnehcream frosting, and I got Kraft Strawberry Marshmallows for the noses and ears.

First step was cutting the marshmallows into noses and ears – each nose was about 3/4 of a marshmallow, and the last 1/4 was cut in half to make the 2 ears. Pro-tip: rinse the scissors often. They get very sticky when cutting marshmallows. I had the hot pink sparkley sugar sprinkles in a small bowl, and after cutting the ears, I dipped them into the bowl. Marshmallows are so gooey, the sprinkles stuck right on. Soon, I had a rather gory bowl full of noses and a plate full of ears.

I did all this while the cupcakes themselves were baking. Naturally, I also put the cupcakes in hot pink wrappers. You may recall that the birthday girl was a bit of a pink fan.

For the frosting color, I wanted it to match the marshmallows exactly. For this I used Americolor #114, Deep Pink (it comes in their “student” 12-pack, if you happen to be looking for a great set of gel food colors). Now, I am far too lazy to hand-frost cupcakes. I’m also terrible at it. What I did instead was frost them with a large round tip, Wilton #12, and then use a flat off-set spatula to smear the frosting around so the piggy faces would be a bit smoother.

Then, because I was told sparkles would get me extra points, and as a video gamer I do so love extra points, I sprinkled each cupcake with some pearl shimmer dust. It’s a bit hard to see in the photos, but it did make the cupcakes shimmer!

Next step: piggy faces! The eyes are mini chocolate chips put in pointed-side-down, and the nostrils and mouths are drawn on with black decorating gel. The nose and ears just stick onto the frosting, though you want to get the ears at a good angle to make sure they’re stuck on well and won’t fall off.

Soon I had a load of piggies! Apparently the name for a group of pigs depends on the age… I think these are young, so I’m going to call this a drove of piggies.

After getting all the cupcakes done for the order, I decided to have a little fun with the faces of the ones that were left over.

By all reports, the cupcakes were a delicious hit! They were pretty fun to make, too. 🙂