Little Bees

This evening I made cupcakes for work tomorrow as a thank you for the lovely birthday gift my co-workers gave me. I made Nigella Lawson’s Carrot Cake Cupcakes and her Night and Day Cupcakes, both from „How to be a Domestic Goddess“, which was a birthday gift as well.

I had bought marzipan and yellow food color some days ago, because I wanted to make little marzipan bees for my birthday. That was back when I naively thought I’d have the time to actually bake a cake for my birthday. Since my father is an entomologist it would have been a nice surprise for him, but unfortunately I never got around to making anything remotely cake-like. For his birthday then. It’d be perfect.

Anyway, it seemed like I should use the marzipan anyway, since I was afraid I’d just forget if I didn’t and then I’d feel bad if I’d have to throw it away, so I decided to make marzipan bees to decorate one batch of the cupcakes with. It was easier then I thought but took a lot of time and patience. The result however is one of the cutest things I ever made in the kitchen.

I colored the marzipan yellow and made little oval bee bodies. Then I made the stripes and eyes with melted chocolate. I used a teaspoon to dribble the chocolate from for the stripes, but that didn’t work for the eyes, so I used a skewer instead, which – as it turned out – would have been the better choice for the stripes as well. The wings were little shredded almond pieces. I was a bit afraid of that part, but it turned out that finding good wing-sized almond pieces was actually harder than pushing the almond wings into the little marzipan bodies.

I also dribbled some more chocolate on the frosting, but that was mostly because I had so much left (bee stripes and eyes don’t really need a lot of chocolate) and I hate letting things go to waste and could think of nothing better to do with my little bowl of melted chocolate. Just eat it, you say? Well, maybe you’re right.

Needless to say I am really proud of my little bees. Too bad they’re going to be eaten. And soon.