Trash to Treasure and The Florida Snowbird

Over Christmas, there were so many darling recipes for this thing and that. One of the most fun recipes I saw was for snowmen cupcakes, and I noticed them on several blogs. Here's a good shot of some cuties (and if you click on the link below, youll have the directions for making them). These were taken from a website called:

Baby Center

I'm not usually that intrepid when it comes to food, but I decided to be very brave and get my ingredients together to attempt to make these cupcakes for our dessert table at the party for our close friend's daughter. It was after Christmas, but hey, a snowman is a seasonal thing that's good for the entire winter, right? They were to go on this table with the snowmen I showed you last week when I showed you my Trash to Treasure china I got at Dollar Tree...



Sooooo, I bought the suggested ingredients (or at least most of them): marshmallows, icing, Hershey's Kisses (which I always have on hand!), pretzel sticks, and licorice, and I even found some candy corn (my own naive idea) for the noses! To save time, I bought the cupcakes themselves which I found in miniature, already frosted in white icing. So I was set, baby. Yeah.

I started with a prototype and quickly discovered that their eyes weren't apt to stick very easily unless you add a little dab of icing, so I tried that. Then I realized that the candy corn noses had the same problem, but the only way to remedy that was to sort of twist them into their faces. Once they were in place, the snowmen started to bear more of a resemblance to Corporal Klinger on Mash than they did the cute little roly-poly snowmen online. My guys had veritable beaks! :>[



As the hour grew late and the threat of greeting guests in my jogging suit loomed ominously, I had a quick decision to make: To serve or not to serve? That was the question of the minute remaining. In my younger years when everything had to be prefect to be served, I would have opted out. In my latter years with my new found boldness, I had no choice but to serve them, so serve them I did!

And as I was lining them up on the twin cake stands, I was struck with the notion that we don't even have snowmen in Florida, but we do have snow-birds, better known as winter visitors/tourists. So these cupcakes quickly became snowbirds and were presented to the guests as such. Even in their somewhat questionable condition, some posing as a cyclops (the other eye lying lamely on the plate), people loved them and better still, ATE them! And smiled. And laughed. The groom who's a native New Yorker loved them! And even a girl who attended the Culinary Institute thought they were a hoot! Yes, I served her one, and she ate every bite. I know. I held my breath and watched. ;-)



So what could have ended up in my trash can ended up being a treasure with the addition of a little creative story-telling. Thank you, Lord, for your endless support and fail proof prompting! And thank you most of all for Florida Snowbirds! Oh, and if you look real closely at the following picture, you'll notice that the guests started snitching these first! :>)



That's my Trash To Treasure offering this Tuesday, and I want to thank Diane for kindly hosting us. If you'd like to see more Trash to Treasure posts, please go to Diane's blog, A Picture is Worth A 1,000 Words, where interesting things await you!


[Photo in honor of my own little Boy Scout, Mr. Magpie, who served valiantly that day as always and who, in real life, attained the rank of Eagle Scout, enjoying many a s'more at many a jamboree!]

Warmly,


Mrs. Magpie (Sheila)