Rubber Duck Cupcakes

Yes, Rubber Duck Cupcakes. My friend bought me this amazing book called What's New, Cupcake? by Alan Richardson and Karen Tack.  It's a pretty awesome book and I suggest everyone should buy it. And I do mean everyone. Anyway, I decided I would make the Rubber Duck Cupcakes for a New Year's Eve party I attended. There are definitely a few things I'm going to change for the next time I make these, but I'll get to that later. 

Just so you know, I cheated and use packaged cake mix with the directions that the book provided for a vanilla cupcake.

After purchasing some delicious iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts, I cut marshmallows at a diagonal.

Above are the beaks and tails, I created them out of Starbursts.  Like I said earlier, the book is really neat and gives you so many ideas on how to use candy to decorate.  One such suggestion is to microwave Starbursts for 5 seconds, so I did.  They're much easier to manipulate like that.  As you can tell I did have some problems with the feet. I think next time I should spend a little more time on detail.

After the cupcakes cooled, I began to assemble the cupcakes and let them freeze for a bit.

Now for the frosting, they suggest you do not used whipped frosting.  I have to agree. I had some issues, but I think the end result wasn't too far off.

Eyes are a little different, but to each their own!

Yeah... those beaks are a little ridiculous. 

I had more cupcakes, so I was lazy and used more prepared frosting. 

For some reason the pink ones don't look as good as the yellow ones, but I didn't want to toss them! You should also buy the appropriate amount of frosting and not just wing it - like I did.