These are Groot
After seeing Guardians of the Galaxy a few times in the theater, I knew I'd be making at least one themed cake.... I was close. No cake, but cupcakes!
Sometimes, I think of an idea for a cake or cupcakes and do my best to make it work, that wasn't the case here. I saw these online and I knew I would need to recreate them.
I printed out a few of the stencils and got to work making the shortbread cookie dough that was suggested in the initial post.
I'm not going to sugar coat it, screw this shortbread recipe. The dough was too wet and didn't roll easily, additionally, it didn't stay together well enough while I was cutting out the Groots. I scrapped the whole thing and opted to make my favorite sugar cookie recipe. I used a variation of the recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. This is my favorite cookbook because it has tried and true recipes that leave room for personal flair.
The sugar cookie worked great. I was able to make multiple Groots at the same time.
I had already baked some Funfetti cupcakes as requested by the birthday girl. Sometimes I'm a baking snob and I want to make everything from scratch (I'm looking at you, pie crust) but I also don't stress about using the box mix when I want to save time or that is what is preferred by the people who will be eating the final product.
Next step was making my frosting. This was my first attempt at cream cheese frosting and, like most frosting, it was easy peasy. Thank you, kitchenaid mixer, you really saved me cleaning up a huge mess of powdered sugar after using my handheld mixer. The key to this frosting is keeping it cold as long as possible, that's the only way you can get it to do what you want. First step: grass.
Then the eyes and slight embellishments on Groot and I was ready to put it all together.
Bam! Dancing Baby Groot Cupcakes!
I had so much fun making these and the best part was how well received they were. The birthday girl and our fantastic friends seemed to enjoy them and that's all that really matters.
