Graduation Cupcakes

My brother in law Tim just graduated from high school, hooray!  Therefore I volunteered to bring a tasty treat to the grad party = cupcakes!!!!!!  Not just any cupcakes, graduation cap cupcakes to be exact!

I borrowed the idea from another blogger, such a great idea she had, you can check it out here!

We planned on a lot of kids, so I did a double batch = 48 cupcakes, my counters were covered!  I actually thought to take this picture after I had started packing them up for overnight storage, so some are missing...

 The supplies I used for making the cap were:

• Store brand peanut butter fudge cookies
• Reese's peanut butter cups
• Rips Whips candy (skinny rope-like candy)
• Mini M&M's

Here is the cap by itself, looks great!

I prepared my assembly line so we were ready for action!

I first whipped up a batch of standard butter cream.  Before I added the chocolate baking powder I frosted 15 cupcakes with it so that I would later be able to write out Happy Graduation...

I also set aside some more white frosting to color (red and blue the school's colors) for writing the letters later.

Then I added the chocolate to make the chocolate frosting for the rest of the cupcakes.  I frosted all my cupcakes using Wilton Tip #21 (I think I need to buy a larger one of these, because I wish that the frosting was a bit thicker, next time...)

Also, I used my trick for filling the piping bag using a cup, works great every time!

For those that don't know, simply place your piping bag in a tall cup and turn it inside out will make it immensely easier to fill with frosting! (Especially if your handy husband is not home to hold your bag for you).

While we're on the tips section, I found that freezeing the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups helped the wrapper come off more cleanly so you wouldn't get the peanut butter stripe on the side.

Now it was time to start building the caps!  Frosting, chocolate, frosting, cookie, frosting, rope & M&M.

Done!

Then I wrote out my special message on the white cupcakes.  It is fun to play scramble up the letters and see who can figure out what they say!

All cupcakes nicely arranged in their carriers, now if only they can make a safe trip.  My mother in law said that I need a cake car seat!

Happily these babies did not have the same fate as their sister cakes a few weeks prior.  Read all about the tragic Upside Down Chocolate Cake story here.

These were a huge hit with all the graduates.  The more sweets the better for future college students...  Do you have any fun graduation ideas?  Please share!