American Girl Cupcakes

Our oldest daughter turned 7 recently and she LOVES the American Girl book series. She and I have been reading them together for over a year and now she can read them on her own (love that)! She reads them every night.

A few weeks before her birthday she was looking around americangirl.com and came across a  quick video of bakers making American Girl cupcakes (I can no longer find the video). She was immediately sold on these cupcakes being served for her birthday.

So the day before her birthday we made some of our own American Girl cupcakes and some resembling each of our family members. We had a lot of fun creating the girls and referencing the books to see what they look like.

If you have a daughter who loves American Girls or just want to make people cupcakes here is what you'll need.

You Need:
Cooked and Cooled Cupcakes
Butter Cream Frosting (recipe below)
Small tubes of writing icing (optional)
Cocoa - for dark skin and brown hair
Food Coloring - gel colors will give you more bold and true colors, like the red hair
Candy (think ahead of who you are creating so you will have appropriate eyes color, hair etc)

       - we used licorice, sixlets (for some of the eyes), piky stix/ cool aid (rosy cheeks) etc. . . .
       - Fruit leather would also work great for the hair
Ribbons or other accessories
Icing bag or plastic sandwich baggies

While you are baking your cupcakes you'll need to make yourself some butter cream frosting. I think store bought might be a little too soft for piping through a bag for hair and homemade is better anyway.

Here is my mom's recipe for butter cream frosting that we've been using forever! It's so good!

Butter Cream Frosting
2 sticks of butter - soft/room temperature
2 lbs powdered sugar
1.5 tsp vanilla or almond extract
1-2 TBS of milk- as needed

Beat the sugar, butter, and vanilla together. Add 1TBS of milk and mix. The texture should be soft, yet hold together well, not runny. Only add more milk if needed.

Color the Frosting

Divide the frosting in separate bowls so you can make different colors. We kept most of it white for the faces, but also made red, yellow and brown. Make brown by adding some cocoa - just add it little by little to get the taste you like.

Frost & Decorate

*To make the frosting smooth for the faces just dip your knife in a cup of water ad smooth it over the already spread frosting.

*To pipe on strands of hair, lips, and glasses we put the frosting in the corner of a baggie and just cut off a tiny tip. Always test how thick the line is by piping it out on paper first.

*Use candies for eyes and hair. We used small ribbon to add embellishments to make the cupcakes look like the American Girls. 

* Sprinkle on a tad bit of red pixy stix sugar to make rosy cheeks.

Samantha, Kirsten, Addy, Kit, Molly, Kaya, and Felicity

Here's our little family!

Have fun making, creating and eating your cupcakes!