Sheep Cupcakes

I made these for Easter, but they would be cute for a birthday party too. My version is really pathetic compared to the original here. I was trying to use what I had for the most part, but the heart sprinkles for the nose would be a huge improvement. Googly eye sprinkles would also be better and I got too much icing on the chocolate chips on this one. Visit the link for step by step directions. The body is a mini powdered sugar donut, legs are pretzel sticks, ears are chocolate chips, and faces are mini oreos. I used icing and black gel for the eyes and some leftover Christmas green sprinkles for the grass. You could also color your icing green and pipe it on with a grass tip.

I used this icing from Tasty Kitchen, which is pretty much my favorite icing.

• 5 Tablespoons Flour
• 1 cup Milk
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 cup Butter
• 1 cup Granulated Sugar (not Powdered Sugar!)

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix is. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. It must be completely cool before you use it in the next step. Stir in vanilla.

While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. You don’t want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. If it looks separated, you haven’t beaten it enough! Beat it until it all combines and resembles whipped cream.

Sounds strange, but I personally prefer this to buttercream. It's very light.