Mushroom Cupcakes

I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this before.

And I know I've blogged about her before (that's my own little toadstool she's holding).

And if you were paying attention yesterday, you noticed that my sister has a thing for mushrooms and toadstools as well.  They're cute on their own.

But they're also a perfect match for garden gnomes.  (Or in Elisabeth's case woodland gnomes.)

So, for Elisabeth's church shower this weekend, I volunteered to take care of cakes.

Meringue mushrooms had to top each one of course.

Actually, my mom ended up making the cupcakes because sometime late afternoon on Saturday I realized I was supposed to go and see Gypsy with Elisabeth. (I'd seen it before in middle school and it depressed me as much this time as it did last time, so never again.) Mom made Coconut Icing to go on top so the green would look more like grass.  It's purpose was successful, but it did make it more difficult to get the mushrooms to stay in place. But very, very yummy... thanks, Mom!  The meringue mushrooms are not that difficult, but they are very time consuming.  They take a long time in the oven to dry out (2-3 hours in this humidity) and then there's the assembly.  It took me about an hour and a half to do around 50.  The good news is: you don't have to have the recipe book if you want to do them yourself.  Here's Martha's link... have fun!  (BTW, I did hear that on average these meringues have about 20 calories to them.  Mine had a lot of chocolate on them, so it might have been a bit more, but really not that bad.)

Bonus, the kids have decided they like mushrooms!