Halloween Cupcakes and Nails

Disney was holding a "Haunt Your Disney Side" contest this October to win a midnight party at the Haunted Mansion in Disney World, and a one-night stay in Cinderella Castle!  The categories for entry were costumes, decorations, desserts and pumpkin carvings.  My entry didn't win, but I had fun making it!  I chose Mickey and Minnie Halloween Cupcakes, and this is how it went!

I started with some cute Halloween cupcake wrappers from Michaels:

Of course they weren't the foil kind so the oil bled through and the designs weren't very clear anymore. At least they were fun for me to look at while I baked!

I bought all the candy for decorating at Fuzziwig's--Jellybeans, sour candy tape, mini M&Ms, candy bones, and much more that I tried for ears, noses and eyes… but the candy I listed is all I ended up using!  Oh, and this TINY CONE with marshmallow that was just TOO CUTE not to buy… and I used it as a witch hat, as you'll see below :)  (Do you like my Frankenstein nails?  I have more Disney-ish nails at the end of this post!)

Now, if this were my cupcake blog, I'd go through many more steps with pictures, but it's more about the finished product here on my Disney blog, so here's Mickey (pre-vampire):

Oreo ears, mini M&Ms glued with frosting to vanilla jellybeans, a black licorice jellybean for his nose, sour candy tape cut into a tongue shape, and frosting.  There is no frosting around his face because the chocolate cupcake itself was the perfect color!

And here's Minnie, much the same except for her chocolate-sprinkles eyelashes (and pre-witch)!

Here is a side-view of Minnie (with her witch hat on) just to show you how funny it looked when it wasn't at just the right angle!

It was meticulous work making their faces--I used an offset spatula and vanilla frosting dyed to just the right color (some yellow, a teensy bit of red), and spread it on in the face shape.  As you can see, each "mouse" was actually 3 cupcakes.  So I didn't make more than the two I needed for my photo submission!  I made some fun Halloween-y "background" cupcakes with what frosting and sprinkles I had left:

So here it is, my submission for the "Haunt Your Disney Side" contest!  Like I said, I didn't win, but it was fun making this, and now I can put it in my scrapbook :)  Mickey has 2 little white-frosting fangs, a candy bone as his vampire bow tie, and sour candy tape as his vampire-cape collar!  Minnie has a frosted and sprinkled cone as her witch hat, with sour candy tape as the ribbon! 

And, as I promised, here is a picture of the nails I did for Halloween: poison apple nails!  All using nail polish and a dotting tool!  Hope you had a happily haunting Halloween!

Hollywood Studios' 25th Anniversary Cupcake From Scratch

A couple months ago (May 1), Disney's Hollywood Studios celebrated their 25th anniversary.  If you were there, you may have bought this delicious, chocolate-hazelnut cupcake.  If not, you are in luck!  Disney's official blog site has shared it with us, and (a couple months late) I tried it out.  You can read all about it on my cupcake blog!  Here's how ours came out:

Boo to You!!

oh. my. goodness.  My dad & I just got back from Disney World last night.  We had the BEST time.  I have SO MUCH TO TELL YOU!

I went through such a FUNK this morning!!  As we all know, Disney is the Happiest Place on Earth, so it was a little sad coming home.  But home is where the heart is, so of course it wasn't THAT bad :)  I will be writing a post on how to help yourself through the Post-Disney Blues, or as I will further refer to them, the PDB's.  But first (and one of the steps to curing the PDB's), pictures from my trip!

We stayed at All-Star Music, in the Broadway section.  We found these adorable washcloth ghosts hanging in our window:

I just love Disney.  Don't you?  We went to MNSSHP our second day, so I will start with those photos:

These were all over the place, but that didn't make them any less special!  How CUTE!

Here's my dad & me in our costumes: Dr. Doofenshmirtz and The Little Mermaid :D  And Mickey, of course!

The Haunted Mansion was beautifully spooky!!  We made sure to stop by before it got too crowded, which was before the official Halloween party started (MNSSHP starts at 7 but you can go in at 4).  It was awesome, as usual.  We got stuck looking dead-on at Madame Leota's floating head and had that announcement about the ride beginning again in a few moments.  That happened a few times at the party, but it was okay!!  I got a good picture of Jack Sparrow while we heard "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me" for about 25 minutes on repeat at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean:

This means free candy!!  You don't even have to say "trick or treat!"  Except sometimes it's raisins...

The lighting was so pretty!  Here's Frontierland:

We saw an almost-private screening of Country Bear Jamboree (there were maybe 5 other people there).  We heard about the re"fur"bishment this attraction had in early October and were fretting it might not be open when we were there.  However, it was open, and the bears looked so clean and shiny!  They even finally referenced how Big Al was interrupting the finale with his own song.  Here's the curtain closing on him, haha.

There were a lot of awesome costumes!!  I saw a few guys dressed as Prince Phillip and the Disney fox version of Robin Hood (my favorite Disney movie from my childhood :)), a family of Disney gift cards (so clever!), a few Barbie and Kens from Toy Story 3...  Here's a family dressed as a Toy Story group:

And Kiss:

Here's some pics of the rides:

It's a Small World:

The castle was beautiful, as always:

We saw the Happy Hallo-Wishes fireworks show:

A big tree was in our way (because it was crowded in the prime viewing areas) but we could still see the ghosts and pumpkins projected on the castle!  The colors were nice and our "ghost host" was great :)

Then there was Mickey's Boo-to-You! Parade which began with the Headless Horseman trotting down the route!

 

 The gang were in their Halloween get-ups!

I didn't get a good picture of Eeyore, but he was dressed as a cute clown :) Christopher Robin actually looked just like the character from the books, and he's a face character!  Oh, they're all so cute...

I've never seen Kanga, Roo, and Rabbit!  How awesome!

There was a great Haunted Mansion part to the parade:

We didn't know who this guy and the dog were!  I googled it today and found out it's the "Caretaker and Dog" from the scene in the Haunted Mansion.  I don't remember this scene.  I thought it was from The Great Mouse Detective!  Haha.  Oh well.  It was still so cute to see a real dog in the parade!

 

Then there were the hitchhiking ghosts:

 

And the Country Bear Jamboree:

And, of course, Clara Cluck.  What??  She came down the parade route in her own barn float, clucking away to "Boo to You" hahaha.  What was that about?  Needless to say, we loved it.  I think this was my favorite part of the parade.

Here's another nod to Robin Hood--the Sheriff of Nottingham:

Here's Maleficent:

Goofy came to end the parade with his big candy concoction:

We saw the sign on our way out:

Then there were the treats!!

Aaah!  They had these adorable mouse ears.  When you lift the flap on top, Chip and Dale are under it :)

We saw these cute lanterns and popcorn souvenir buckets all over the park--they were aDORable!  

They had Madame Leota lollipops:

And Haunted Mansion ghost ones:

Their candy apples are just the cutest!  Too bad candy apples are so messy!!

Then there were the cupcakes, of course.  YUM!

I love the chocolate mouse ears on the ghost cupcakes!!  I want the mold!!  I finally bought a pumpkin-topped cupcake on our last night in Disney:

Cute AND delicious!!  Then there were the real pumpkins:

And the not-real pumpkins:

 

 

Mickey and Minnie in their farmer's clothes at The Land in Epcot, with some familiar pumpkin faces...

Duffy was in his pumpkin costume, also at Epcot, wearing my tiny Duffy on his head:

And of course there were pumpkin scarecrows at Main Street, USA:

Here's some decorations at the entrance to Magic Kingdom:

And the exit!  Oh, it was such a magical time.  See ya real soon!  (So much more to come!!)