Teddy Bear Assembly Line

I dreamed about teddy bear cupcakes last night. Seriously. Probably because I decorated teddy bear cupcakes yesterday...over and over and over again. I always forget how much more work cupcake decorating is than cake decorating. Just when you finish, you realize that it was just the first one, and there's 11 more to do!

This is what cake-decorating does to my kitchen...

Actually this was probably my easiest cake order yet. These teddy bears turned out cuter than I expected, and once I got my method down, each one got easier and the work went a little bit faster. My total hands-on time was just 2 hours...my fastest decorating time yet!

This particular order was for a cute little 1-year-old's birthday. (If you click on that link and scroll down a bit, you'll see sweet Jack. My friend Mandi took his photo awhile back, and she passed my cake-biz info along to his mom. Thanks, Mandi!) Anyways, Jack's mama requested teddy bear cupcakes, and neither one of us could find an example of them anywhere. The closest I could come up with were the Panda Bear cupcakes in my "Hello, Cupcake!" book:

So I used these pandas as a rough template/idea springboard, and this is what I came up with:

(Mama couldn't decide if she wanted just teddy bear faces, or teddy bears with bodies, so she asked for a half dozen of each.)

Here are the fellas all packaged up and ready to go on a (stressful!) ride across town. I was afraid their heads might slide off during the drive. Thankfully, no casualties!