Cupcakes

It all started when we made this cake for my mother-in-law for her birthday.  The kids and I made a big batch of marshmallow fondant and had a ball cutting out and making little flowers to put on the cake and we may have made too many...

Over that same Mother's Day weekend, my husband gave me this adorable mini-cupcake maker and an idea was born!

 Since our rental house is located in a city-neighborhood with tons of kids, we decided that we would create a Cupcake Stand!  First, I allocated a batch of mini-cupcakes to each kid.  They helped me bake and frost them.

 And then decorated them to their hearts content with whatever sprinkles, colored sugar, and edible decorations we had in the cupboard.

We had a lesson about NOT licking our fingers when we are making food to sell or give away.

And then we were ready to go!

The kids set their price and made their signs.  We discussed what a reasonable price per cupcake would be (probably not $500 per cupcake Ian!)

We had a lesson about how to make change for a dollar, how to calculate price for several cupcakes, and good salesmanship etiquette.

And then we made a colorful stand and waited for the customers to roll in.  Every time a car rolled by or someone came out of their house, Tanner would discover that he needed a drink in the house and Ashlyn had to go to the bathroom, so they would run inside as fast as the could before someone could talk to them... Yikes!  Ian on the other hand hollered at any neighbor that came outside, "Hey, do you want to buy some of our delicious cupcakes!" And he turned a small profit.

After an hour when the cupcakes began to melt, we packed up shop and took our proceeds to the local variety store and bought this beaut of a swimming pool.

The kids felt like they had a pretty successful day, but more importantly Mom had a killer day when she turned a pretty profit selling ice cold milk for $5.00 a shot 50 feet down from the cupcake stand! :)