Adorable Airplane Cupcakes and Favor Boxes

Do I love to bake? Why, yes I do. Do I love crafts? Yep. But I rarely have time to really enjoy doing either. When I was asked to make cupcake party party favors for my sister-in-law’s shower, I embraced it as an excuse to spend time engaging in two of my favorite hobbies. The theme, in case it’s not obvious, is airplanes. The cakes are chocolate mint.

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These are pretty easy. I frosted the cupcakes in a thin layer of blue frosting for the “sky.” If you do these, go light on this layer. The “clouds” add a lot frosting and they can end up overly sweet.

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Here’s a secret. I cheated on these. I’ll share more about it in a post on another day, but I am often baking for people who can’t eat dairy. It’s much easier to use a box mix and canned frosting than to find a dairy-free recipe I’m happy with. That’s not to say they aren’t out there, because they are, but my favorites all have butter, milk, sour cream, yogurt and/or buttermilk. The frostings have butter and/or cream cheese. I just tweak the pre-made versions and they’re super yummy. Anyway, the clouds are a whipped vanilla frosting flavored with mint. If you do it this way, make sure you keep these cool. The frosting is already thinned and it melts easily. I didn’t have the tip I wanted, so I used the tip coupler for the clouds.  Worked like a charm.

Airplane Cupcakes

This is my first time working with Wilton melts. They aren’t nut-free, so I try to avoid them… but, since Bug wasn’t invited to the shower, I went for the easiest option. The mold is available on Amazon. I printed the small circles with red Wilton melts and a large cake pop stick. Once they hardened, I poured in the blue candy. I used star sprinkles (just pulled out the white ones) for the decorations.

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This is what the cupcakes look in the boxes. I purchased the Kraft boxes online. They were about $25 (not including shipping) for 250 boxes. I love them and I think they’ll be great for gifts and projects. I used my Cricut and the Sweet Tooth cartridge to make the inserts. If you’re wondering, I used the 6” setting to fit in the 4” square boxes. The inserts were a bit on the small side for the box, but they held the cupcakes perfectly. Unfortunately, only two inserts fit on one 12 X 12” sheet of paper and the Cricut won’t print them both automatically. FYI, LadyBug dropped her box and it got just a tiny bit of frosting messed up. They held up well to the trauma!

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Here are the final boxes. I love them. I stamped the boxes (before folding them, of course) with the cloud stamps and one little red heart. The airplane is from the Wild Cards 2 Cricut cartridge. I then wrapped the boxes twice with a coordinated hemp twine and pinned the plane on with a mini clothes pin.

As far as favors go, these are a bit time intensive. You can’t really make the cupcakes far in advance, so there’s a lot of baking/frosting/wrapping/pinning all at the last minute. This is better suited to a small shower or party. I had to make 35, which was fine, but I wouldn’t want to make a lot more of them!

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2 Responses to Adorable Airplane Cupcakes and Favor Boxes

    • Thanks, Carrie. I have to admit that my creativity and enthusiasm sometimes outpace my artistic skill set. =} I was glad they came out just as I imagined them in my mind!

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