Happy Birthday USA!

by KellyLynn Charles
(Las Vegas, NV, USA)

To begin with, I made candy icing stars with the #16 tip and left them to dry for a few days. When dry I took covered floral wire and used more of the candy icing to attach each star to the wire. These then dried overnight. I took 3 wires and twisted the bottoms together to form the fireworks.

The red stars are chocolate candy melts. They were microwaved and then I used a disposable decorating bag with the tip cut out to pipe the chocolate into the mold and left to harden. Once they were hard, I popped them in the refrigerator for about 5minutes- this helps the candies pop out of the mold with ease!

The icing is buttercream and I used 2 colors- blue and white. I used the plastic-wrap trick to load both colors into my decorating bag to get the dual colors. I used the 4B tip since it is larger and gets that great look on the cupcakes!!

I made both chocolate and white cupcakes to make sure to satisfy all the party guests!

I let the buttercream crust for about and hour, then took the "fireworks" and stuck them straight down into the cupcake. I then gently put the candy stars into the icing (only a little bit)- leaning slightly on the floral wire.

They were a hit!