Pirate Party: Jake & the Neverland Pirates Cupcakes

What’s a party without dessert?  For some of Little Crafter’s previous birthday parties, we’ve had some really amazing themed cakes made by my good friend Clem.  This time, though, we decided to go with something simple and easy that Little Crafter could actually help make; cupcakes with special toppers.  He was so excited about helping and could hardly stand it that we weren’t able to make the cupcakes weeks ahead of time.  When it was finally time to bake them, he put on his apron and wanted to be involved in everything!  Here’s how they turned out!

pirate party cupcakes

Materials: The Toppers
– cardstock
– digital images
– printer
– Silhouette Cameo and software OR circle punch
– toothpicks
– tape/adhesive

Little Crafter not only wanted a pirate party, he specifically wanted Jake & the Neverland Pirates.  His favorite characters from the show are Jake, Izzy, and Scully the parrot.  To make the cupcake toppers, I decided to play with the Silhouette Cameo’s print and cut feature.  I found some images of the characters online and saved them to my computer.  Then, I opened my Designer Edition software and put as many of them as I could on a letter sized page.

First, I printed the page before adding any of the cutting marks to it.
Then, I went back and drew a circle around one of the images.  I duplicated that same circle and placed one over each character.
I placed the printed page on my cutting mat and had Cammie cut the circles.

jakecupcakes2

Once all the character circles had been cut, I opened a new file and drew circles that were slightly larger than those.  Cammie cut those from black cardstock, 2 per topper.

Finally, it was time to assemble them!  Little Crafter insisted on doing this part “all by myself.”  Here he is, hard at work.  He glued each character in the center of a black circle.  Then, we taped a toothpick to the back and glued a second black circle over it.

cupcake toppers

I was so pleased with how they turned out!  If you wanted to do something similar but don’t have an electronic cutting machine, never fear.  You could achieve a similar effect by printing out your characters and using circle punches instead.  That’s how I would have done it in my pre-Cammie days.

cupcakepicks

The day before the party, it was finally time to bake those cupcakes!  We used a trusty box mix and baked two batches.  Little Crafter had chosen some blue and red cupcake liners and sprinkles, and I was excited to try food spray for the first time.  I’ve always loved the look of it, and since red icing is notoriously not the tastiest, I thought using white icing and adding a bit of color would be a better way to go.  I bought Wilton Color Mist in red and blue, and all you had to do was shake it and spray!  It was easy to use once I got the hang of it, and turned out just how I had hoped.

cupcake

All that was left was to insert a pick into each cupcake, which Little Crafter insisted on doing…again “all by myself.”  If you are curious about how to create the fun swirly design with the icing, it’s easy with a jumbo decorating tip!  I have a tutorial for it in my Peppermint Cupcakes post!

Jake pirate cupcakes

A certain birthday boy was insistent that they needed to be “quality tested”…how could I argue with that?  Once I had his seal of approval, we were good to go for party day.

cupcake

We had 48 cupcakes, so they wouldn’t all fit on my cute little cupcake stand…the others were on various plates and stands on the food table, but this gives you and idea of how fun they were!  I did make about a dozen with chocolate icing too, which hubby went for right away.

Pirate Cupcakes

This is such a quick and easy way to make a special themed birthday treat, and the birthday boy or girl can even do a lot of hands-on helping.  You can totally customize it for any kind of party by using different characters, images, or even words on the toppers.  What do you think?  Could you use it for your next party?

Hugs & Glitter,

siggy

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