Elmo!

Little M and his mom (and their trusty yellow lab, Isa) take care of Brownie during the week while Lito and I are at work -- so naturally when little M turned two, I had to do something awesome for his birthday. Since he's usually dancing to Elmo or Thomas when I drop Brownie off in the mornings, and since I have this awesome piping tip and because Elmo is easier to make than Thomas, I made Elmo cakes. Voila!

Ingredients: 

• Body: Yellow Cake
• Fur: Red Buttercream Frosting (with a whole jar of Wilton "No Taste" red coloring)
• Eyes: Sliced Marshmallows and Sparkle Black Gel
• Nose: Peanut Butter M&M
• Mouth: Oreo

A couple of things I am happy about:

1. The fur! The red Elmo fur was actually red, didn't taste horrible (have you tasted red frosting? it's normally pretty gross b/c the coloring is too strong)
2. The M&M noses were the perfect size -- and there were enough orange M&Ms in one box to make 24 (or more?) Elmos.
3. The mouths -- once I figured out that I should cut a little semi-circle of cake out of the way, I was able to lay the Oreo-half flat. From there on out, Elmo stopped looking non-plussed, and started looking a little happier. 

[Above:] A photo of the mouths after I figured out the cake-cutting trick...

A couple things I would probably do differently next time:

1. Make the frosting thicker from the get-go. It's harder on your hand when you pipe it out of the bag, but it's more fur-like in the end.
2. Use Necco Wafers instead of marshmallows for the eyes. It bugged me that the marshmallows weren't perfectly round -- they gave Elmo a kind of....not so Elmo-y look.

As an aside, apparently little M asked for Elmo "Pupakes" for breakfast on his birthday. Charmed! Lito and I have been calling the little cakes Pupakes all week...

A row of Elmos:

Ready for Birthday time!