"Popcorn" Cupcakes

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.