How-to: Ducky birthday cake

This idea is not original with me. I wish it were because I could probably make a lot of money on it. I found it in the book What's New, Cupcake? by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson. I liked the ducky idea so well that I couldn't stand not using it at my next opportunity.

Since we had a lot of people at our party, I decided to make a cake and cut holes in it (I used a small glass) so I could sink the cupcakes into it. It then looked like the little duckies were swimming on the pond. It worked really nicely, especially since all my handling of the cupcakes kinda squished their bottoms and made them look ugly.

It was a big mess and took me most of an afternoon. But in the meantime, I listened to The Color Purple, read by the author.

The ducky heads are doughnut holes, and the tails are large marshmallows, snipped catty-corner. Since I overfilled the cupcakes, the duckies have sorta tall backs, which necessitated some extra snipping on the marshmallows so their tails looked right.

Everything then gets dipped into yellow frosting (white frosting + yellow food coloring) for a very duck-like coating.

Their eyes are simply a dot of white frosting with tiny chocolate chips in the middles, and their bills and feet are both made of circus peanuts. It turns out that circus peanuts can be melted, just slightly, in the microwave (as in several seconds), and they are then pliable. I rolled them out and used a scissors to cut the shape of the feet. I had to hold the bills on with toothpicks, and I added them just before I served the cake because I was afraid the bills would fall off.
I wanted the cake to look like water, so I made some cream cheese frosting (I used butter pecan cake mix, so I had to have cream cheese frosting!) and put blue food coloring in it. Then I used a spatula and just kinda messed with the top so it looked kinda like waves.