If these aren't hard enough... try making them in Singapore...

Our last meeting for MOPS this year was today and we were having a big celebration to complete a wonderful year that was focused on all the ups and downs of being a mom... like a roller coaster ride.... so the theme was a carnival/theme park idea... we were all to bring a "carnival" food/treat for the last meeting... after I saw Denise Perkin's blog the other day... I knew what I had to bring but I had no idea what I was in for... Although she made the process seem quite easy she did comment on how long it took... but I was up for the task. After finding the recipe on Bakerella for the "Cupcake Pops" I headed to the store... BUT totally forgot that we lived in Singapore and what American recipes call for does not mean that one would find them in Asia... oh no... there were alot of substitutions but all in all it was a tedious 2 day task but my taste buds (and many others...including my son which ate 4 of them) were thankful. So here we go.

The first step is to bake a cake and then crumble it up and add a can of cream cheese icing... we were good until we got to the icing... no icing found in my local market store (there is icing in Singapore but did not want to drive into town and spend $20 on a taxi fare for icing when I could make it my self???)... so I made my own cream cheese icing which was a feat.... but the thing I want you to note here is that the recipe found on-line called for a 1lb of icing sugar (aka powdered sugar)... that is the whole bag... seriously thought is was a misprint but did it anyways and oh was it good.

After crumbling it up, adding the icing, you need to roll out balls and place them on the wax paper... another glitch... no wax paper but I did find wax paper sandwich bags which I cut up and put on my oven tray (since I don't have a baking sheet) :-(... but it worked... then to the frig they go for 3-4 hours.


After that you are to take the balls and by using a flower cookie cutter (you will have to see directions here) you make them into a cupcake shape.... well there was no flower cookie cutter to be found so using my fingers we made do... can you tell which ones were in the shape of balls and which ones were cupcake shaped?

Then you freeze, dip, dip and decorate...that is the short version of course... I did find the chocolate bark to dip the base in but the top was also suppose to be dipped in white or strawberry... could not find that so I decided to make a flower bouquet instead and use icing tubes to make a bunch of flowers instead of cupcakes... it also said that once you placed the stick (suppose to be a lollipop stick but I used kabob sticks) you would need a Styrofoam square to put them in to hold them upright... well where was I to find that.... but after some thought I used a "thirsty hippo"... if you have ever lived in Asia you will know what that is... it is a moisture absorber... so there we had it... I had somewhere to place these things... after all this work I had to make sure they would stand up right?

Then came the decorating... so much fun and messy.

I had to keep them in the frig to keep them cool... is anyone else tired yet?

After all the hard work... this is what you get... a bouquet of eatable cupcake flowers... was it worth it??? I will leave the answer up to the brave ones who decided to make them. Oh yea... it said to wrap them in lollipop bags... what is that... not sure so I just got a box of ziplocs for $2 and cut of the zipper... cheap and it worked.

But they are really cute....

I had some extras so I decided that I would let our playgroup make some and then eat them... how fun. Here are the kids making theirs on the balcony.

Pierce just liked to eat the sprinkles....

Here is Pierce's own cupcake flower... he was so proud...

but it did not take long until he took a big bite... and then he wanted more icing... more icing please.

Here is sweet Elysse enjoying hers....

Thank you Denise for the idea and for a fun filled 2 days... will not be doing it again for a long time but enjoyed it... yours did look better :-).