For SweetPea's 10th birthday party, we decided to go with a "Dinner and a Movie" theme. I found some cute popcorn-box shaped invitations and they inspired me to try my hand at some faux-popcorn cupcakes I had seen in the book "Hello, Cupcake". In the book, they top mini-cupcakes with marshmallow "popcorn" and stack them in a popcorn box. You can find a lot of different versions on the internet for these (a particularly cute one is here at FamilyFun) and following is how I made mine.
To transform the plain white wrappers, I searched for "popcorn clipart" on Yahoo and chose one with lettering that I liked. I resized the image so the words would fit on my cupcakes, printed out a bunch and cut them to fit. I ran them through my Xyron sticker maker only to find out they wouldn't stick to the wrappers. I ended up using a light layer of frosting as "glue" and it worked surprisingly well.
For the popcorn, I used light yellow and white marshmallows, two for each piece of popcorn. Cut the first piece into thirds, lengthwise. Arrange the pieces in a clover shape. Snip the second piece half-way through the top and twist the pieces slightly. Use a dab of frosting to attach the top piece to the bottom bits. I needed 10 to 12 popcorns for each cupcake. I used my favorite buttercream recipe to ice the cakes.
I think that the birthday girl was happy. Hopefully her wish will come true.
