Tutorial Tuesday: Graduation Hat Treats!

This has been Talia's last year of Kindergarten!!!

My baby is graduating from Senior Kindergarten, and I can hardly believe it!


But it's going to happen whether I'm in denial or not, so I'm celebrating (even when I sometimes feel like crying)! I found this recipe from the Life Made Delicious website for mini cupcake mortarboards and decided to make them for Talia's class. I go in and volunteer every other Friday morning, so last Friday I brought them. They were so cute! :)




Here's what I used:



- cake mix (chocolate)
- ready-made frosting
(sort of- I only had vanilla, so I had to add cocoa!! ;)
- fruit leather
- Smarties
(if you're in the U.S., you could do M&Ms or something like that)
- Chirardelli chocolate squares with caramel inside
(you can use anything square, but I could NOT find square cookies!! I looked at 3 or 4 different stores with no luck! Finally I decided to just spend the money on a box of After Eights (even though the majority of the kids probably wouldn't like mint). I went to the drug store to get them & found that these Chirardelli squares were on sale for 97 cents because they were "best before June 30th" ... perfect!!! :)

So, I started by making the mini cupcakes.
Then I added cocoa to my vanilla icing...



...until it was chocolate enough :)



Next I cut up the fruit leather (I thought the pieces I cut & took a picture of below would be right, but I had to cut them in half, because they were too stiff, and stuck straight out the top of the hat).



I cut the muffin tops off so that they would sit flat, upside down.



Now, the assembly:
You only need a dot of frosting to stick the chocolate on
(I went overboard on the first one, shown in the picture below ;)



...and then a dot on top of the chocolate, to "glue" the fruit leather & Smartie onto:



(Notice I had to hold the fruit leather down? That's why I cut the fruit leather strip in half- lengthwise- after the first one. Then it was "droopy" enough)




I love making fun food! :)
And the kids in Talia's class loved them, too :)
What a fun way to celebrate this little graduation in her life.

Disclosure: I am part of the Life Made Delicious Blogger program and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.