Cute Owl Cupcakes

I worked all day today and decided that I would at least blog tonight about something, so I remembered that I had forgotten (lol) that I never blogged about the cutest little owl cupcakes EVER.

I don't know about you, but I know several people that just love owls. Owls have recently become quite popular and it is becoming easier and easier to find owl-themed things. Now that they are popular, I find them even cuter than I did before, but most of my friends were die hard owl fans WAY before the hype and are now pretty unhappy that the rest of the world has caught on to their "thing." I completely understand where they are coming from because I used to LOVE LOVE LOVE black and white milk cows. (Ok, used to is not the correct thing to say as I do still love them dearly and I wish to squeeze them until their little heads pop off, but I don't quite obsess over them the way I used to!)

Anyway, I digress. One of the people that I know that loves owls is Evelyn's teacher. In fact, her entire classroom is owl-themed. Even their nameplates are little owls in the room. Well, it just so happens that this certain teacher's birthday came up recently. It was, in fact, on Monday. The kids were, as I've mentioned, on fall break last week, so they were not going to have the opportunity to celebrate her birthday on the day. So, I decided to make her some cupcakes a week early.

I started with a dark chocolate Duncan Hines mix. My oven runs a little hot and lately my baked goodies have been, in my opinion, a little dry due to that, so I decreased the cooking time. I think they came out moist and fluffy. I let them sit for most of a day and then frosted them with a homemade chocolate buttercream frosting. Next, I piped the frosting using an open, round tip. Lastly, the finishing touches are the cream side of an Oreo cookie (times 2), with a brown M&M in the middle and the beak is an orange M&M. I used the Autumn mix M&Ms to ensure I would have enough of the colors I needed, but I think a regular bag would do the trick. Here is the final result:

I gave them all twenty four, so I didn't get to try one, but  I hear that they were quite tasty and her teacher loved them, so it was all worth while! I also painted an Ikea plain, white picture frame for her which is decorated with owls made from Evelyn's thumbprints.