How to Make Pooh Bear Cupcakes

At school, we have department meetings once a month. The most important part of these meetings, it seems, is the food. The first item on the agenda at the first meeting each year is to decide the snack schedule. We pair off and choose different months in which we are responsible for bringing the refreshments. When the meeting reminder e-mails are sent out, there's always a reminder as to who is bringing the food. This is very important to us. Early on, we had to school the men in the department about making sure they have both salty and sweet snacks, and to not forget the diet soda (the first time they were in charge they brought meats and breads for sandwiches ... that's it). When my months came up this year, I brought ... you guessed it ... cupcakes.

One of the men, Thomas, is a recent father. One day I got a phone call from Thomas's wife. Their little boy was having his first birthday, and Thomas had mentioned my cupcakes. The party was going to have a Winnie the Pooh theme and she wanted to know if I could make her a dozen vanilla and a dozen chocolate cupcakes. So here's what I made ... Pooh heads and "hunny" bees.

To make the Pooh heads, I started off with some Wilton fondant. I used the ready-made fondant because it's a lot more sturdy than my marshmallow fondant. I tinted a bunch of it yellow, rolled it out and, using a round fondant cutter, cut a bunch of circles.

With my fingers, I shaped the circles into Pooh heads.

Next, I used a piping tip to cut half circles from the sides of the circle cut-outs.

Before everything had time to dry too much, I folded the half circles over to make ears (attaching them with a little water) and also pressed a mini chocolate chip into the fondant to make a nose.

Finally, I used a Wilton Food Writer to draw the rest of the face on each of the Poohs.

While these dried, I got started on the bees. First I took the yellow fondant and rolled it into little cylinder shaped bodies.

Next, I took some black fondant, rolled it as thin as I could, and cut some thin strips. I wrapped two of these around each body and attached them with a little water.

I wasn't sure how to do the wings, so I took the piping tip, cut circles out of white fondant, and then cut them in half. I then used a little water to "glue" them on top of the bees. Then to make sure everyone knew that these were friendly bees, I gave them little happy faces with my black food writer.

To assemble the cupcakes, I just made a chocolate swirl on the chocolate cupcakes and placed the Pooh heads on top. Then I took some vanilla buttercream, tinted it yellow, and swirled it around on the vanilla cupcakes to make a bee hive. I then placed a bee on each hive and prayed that they would stay put and not jump off.

And there you have it ... cupcakes for a Winnie the Pooh themed birthday party.