Happy Birthday Sesame Street: Elmo Cupcakes

I've seen Elmo cupcakes ideas all over the internet and they are the perfect treat for a special Sesame Street day - the start of the 40th season!

There are so many variations out there, so I pulled ideas from many of them when making these.

You can make any variety of cupcake you choose - I just happened to have an extra white cake mix on hand, but I think the Funfetti would have been even better!

Here is what we started with...



I used:

Wilton Ready-to-Decorate Red Icing (fabulous!)
Regular-sized marshmallows
Chocolate-covered apricots (looked just like an orange nose so I couldn't pass it up, but in hindsight, I could have done orange peanut M & Ms)
Chocolate chips

And I had a "helper."



For Elmo's fur, I used the star tip with the icing and made it look "fuzzy."

For his eyes, we cut marshmallows in half and my helper put them on.



And the noses were the chocolate-covered apricots but save yourself a few dollars and go with the peanut M & Ms.



At this point, I had blank eyes that need some pupils...



One site had suggested using food decorating markers to draw them on but I was not pleased with this outcome...



So I went with chocolate chips. Just a dab of icing (preferably white) on the marshmallow and those chocolate chips stuck right in place. I did try turning them over to have the flat side up, but they did not stick as well.

And there you go! You could always add a mouth with some black icing but I think this effect is just as good - plus, that takes more work!