L helped me to make these cute little bee cupcakes.

We made a batch of vanilla cupcakes in dark coloured muffin cases. Once they were cool, we iced each cupcake with yellow icing. I wanted the icing to be thick, but smoother than I normally make cake frosting. So I didn’t use as much butter, and I added the milk to the mix a little at a time until I had a nice consistency. I only had liquid food colouring on hand and that makes the icing runnier too. Over the top of the yellow icing, I carefully iced stripes of black icing, well, dark grey was as dark as I could get it, but I used black food colouring. Gel or paste colouring would have been better for making black. I’m happy with the colours anyway.

Once the stripes were done, we added a head made from a honeycomb pods (little choc filled biscuit cups made by Mars). I used white chocolate fudge writing icing to draw on the faces and then some black icing for little antennae. Some of the bees also got mini choc chips as antennae.

Wing made from a pipe cleaner.

L helped me make wings and stingers from black pipe cleaners. She placed the wings to the sides of the cupcakes, and the stinger at the opposite end to the head. I was quite happy with how the wings looked when we were finished.

L made a couple of bee cupcakes all by herself too. I didn’t interfere with her creative juices, just let her get on with making her bees how she wanted. She used some of the pods for antennae, mini choc chips for eyes, and the white chocolate for the pupils and mouth. Her wings and stinger were pipe cleaners. She had a lot of fun creating her bee cupcakes.  And she really liked eating them too!

One of L’ s bees.