Butterfly Effect

So a friend of mine has just adopted a sweet baby girl they named Millicent Jane.  I don't have a picture of her (sorry), but I have some not-as-cute-as-her pictures of the cupcakes I've made for the shower. 

I saw this post on one of my FAVORITE blogs:

http://annies-eats.com/2009/05/26/butterfly-cupcakes/

Please keep in mind hers are professional quality, and mine are not.... I did this all with ziplock bags and a fork.

Anyway, They ended up looking fantastic, and I wanted to show you all how I did it.

 I did a bing search of butterfly clip art until I found a simple shape I liked.  I messed with it a little in Powerpoint (love that program) and printed off a stencil. 

 Using wax paper over the outline, I piped melted chocolate onto pieces of wax paper, 

 I had melted the color I wanted to use (pink for the picture) in a double boiler, and used a spoon to dollop/drip a small amount into each wing section. 

 Using a tooth pick I spread out the colored chocolate to the edges of the wings.

 Here I actually closed off the wing outline on the inside as opposed to leaving the wing 'open' if you will as I did above.  I prefer the fully closed outline to the 'open' one.

 Then I used another toothpick to swirl the two chocolates together.  It became easily muddled, so I had to be careful that I didn't just make a muddy-looking mess.

 Then I sprinkled small white nonparleils (yes, that is how you spell nonparleil) onto the outside edges of the wings.  I learned the hard way that this all needs to be done before the chocolate starts to harden at all... So I could only do about 6 at a time just for safety's sake.

 I Then also made a bunch of antennae with my remaining brown chocolate. 

 So... Then came assembly.  I had done wings in purple, pink and orange, and I made matching buttercream frostings for each.  I used a star tipped nozzle on my ziploc bags for a little more fancy texture, but there were a ton of was to go with this.  If you're good at frosting you could even make a  flower for each, and green leaves around the edges, or just use white for all of it... *shrug*.
Anyway, I used two chocolate chips laid flat-side-in to help prop up the wings (bottom cupcake).  Then I placed the wings in at an angle (3rd row).  Finally I put the body on (2nd row) and the antennae (top cupcake).  I had some extra chocolate after doing the wings and antennae, so I messed around with some body shapes.  In the original post, the blogger used chocolate frosting for the body... I just didn't want to waste the chocolate, so I figured I'd get creative.

 So here is another angle of the assembly so you can see how the chips are placed better.  They really were necessary, without them the wings 'wilted' quickly.

 And here are the finished cakes.  I'm SO excited to display them on a few cake stands... tee hee hee...

 BTW, I invested in a cupcake-carrier.  I figured I make cupcakes often enough and have to jimmy-rig some sort of transportation system that ends up failing more often than not, so it was worth the money.  Plus it was on clearance :)

Jasper just about had a conniption when I told him he couldn't have one... but he got PLENTY of frosting off the beater I let him have. 

 So there you go.  It was alot of work, and frustrating for a perfectionist like me when I don't have the skill or the supplies and tools to make it look like it does in my head, but I am still pretty pleased!  Hope she likes them!