Today I have a 7 year old! My second oldest kiddo, Asher, has a birthday today!!!
Look at this kid! He is legitimately the cutest child who has ever graced this green earth.
Look at those eyes!
Because of Asher’s autism (oh I am pulling the autism card today!) he is non-verbal, and has a hard time communicating in general. I wish I could know what he wanted for his Birthday, but there is no way for me to tell. So I went with chocolate. And robots. What 7 year old boy wouldn’t love these?!?!?!
More on Asher later, let’s focus on these cuppycakes!
I love me some melting wafers, and if you saw my 12 Days of Christmas Snacktivities series, I’m sure you picked up on that! It is so easy to make nifty candies and cupcake toppers with them! All you need to do is get yourself a cool silicone mold, (I got this one off of Etsy– the American shop I got it from is sold out, but you can just search ‘robot mold’ and a bunch of options will come up!) melt some chocolate, then set it and forget it! Well, don’t forget it…
It’s pretty easy to melt chocolate… but you can mess it up badly. You need to microwave the wafers or chocolate chips in a microwave-safe container in 20 second intervals, stirring each time, until they are JUST melted. Make sure you even have a few small unmelted bits left- those will melt when you stir it up again!
Spoon your melted chocolate into your mold. It doesn’t have to be purdy, you can trim off any random scraggler chocolate after it has set. Next let the chocolate harden. If you are in a rush or impatient, you can place it in the refrigerator for 5-10 minutes, but if you have time, just let them set at room temperature. Sometimes the chocolate gets an imperfect look to it after it’s been cold.
Now release your robots from the mold! Gosh those are cute. I happen to be working on a (very strange but lovely) painting that features a robot, and I got some of the inspiration for him from these little guys!
Now all you need to do is make some chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream (I learned all of my cupcaking skills from my good friend Melissa, of Buttercream Couture.)
In fact, I am going interject with my favorite photo of her and I:
Hehehehe. That’s when we did a little collaboration on the button tree cake! She made the most perfect cake- look at it! My job was to stick a button tree on it using the fondant twigs and buttons that she had molded and colored ever-so-perfectly. You can check out some photos for that project on my post about it here. And you can read about our gushy friendship on her post about the cake here.
BACK TO THE CUPCAKES!!!
Top your chocolate cupcakes with your robot family, and wait in anticipation for your Birthday boy to wake up and see them!
I deployed this robot army to my son’s awesome school.
I decided to give him a cupcake for breakfast… Let’s see what he thought of that idea…
…curious…
…hmm…
…interesting…
And he proceeded to just poke at the buttercream a bit ahahah. At least he enjoyed the robot!
Some turkish fruit bread made him happy eventually!
Note the half-haircut. Sure it’s stylish-looking, but it is actually just impossible to give him a whole haircut! Hahaha. Oh well, he pulls it off nicely!
PS. I tried to convince him to eat the cupcake by doing this old trick, which if you haven’t seen yet, you will be glad I showed you!!!
Now THIS is how to eat a cupcake! just rip the cupcake in half, and sandwich it together like that! It is so much easier to eat- and pack up for that matter! You get a more proportioned icing-to-cake ratio in every bite, and it is wayyy less messy!
Gosh this post has been incredibly A.D.D. Sorry!
Finally, let’s get back to Mr. Thrasher:
He loved his Birthday present so much, and I bet he is going to have such a great day at school. He goes to an amazing school for kiddos on the autism spectrum- Mosaic Learning Center in Victoria.
This great school is taking part in the biggest Autism event on Vancouver Island in April (The YAM Autism Walk) and is planning an online auction to raise funds to support the walk and a broad range of services and resources for children on the autism spectrum.
If you have a crafty business, a product or a service that is auction-worthy, and would like to donate it to this cause, please send me an email at dotfalcon@gmail.com. And thank you soooo much in advance and to all the awesome people who have already donated! All businesses will be recognized for their support on the auction item list on the auction’s website, which I will be sharing like a madwoman over the next couple of months 🙂
Anyways I hope everyone is having a lovely Asher’s Birthday.
Happy Robot-Army Deploying/Digesting!
~Dot
Busted Button 