Easter Cupcakes

Here is a simple, fun treat to make with your children at Easter. If you let your children help with the whole process, you will work on math skills, cooking skills, colors, and fine motor skills.

Supplies

• Cupcakes (either make from box or mix your own)
• Cupcake paper cups
• White frosting (buy made or make your own)
• Optional: coconut
• Green food coloring
• Candy eggs (robin eggs, jelly beans, etc.)
• Optional: licorice for a basket handle

Method

1. Make the cupcakes. Be sure to let your children help add ingredients and mix the batter. Also, be sure to talk about the math involved on your child's level, whether on simple counting (one egg, two cups of flour, etc.), addition (we need three eggs. I have one, how many more do we need?), subtraction (we need three eggs, I added two, now how many more do we need?), or fractions (focus on the 1/4 cup of oil and such). 
2. Bake cupcakes and let cool completely. You might want to bake one day and then decorate the next, or bake in the morning and decorate after dinner.
3. After making the cupcakes, make your frosting. If you are making your own, you can add the math benefits here, too. You can also point out the changes that come to your frosting as you add liquids and as you add solids (it is thick, let's add some more milk. Ooohhh, look what happens! OR It is runny, we better add some more powdered sugar).
   
   Once the frosting is made, it is time to add your green food coloring and see what happens.
4. OPTIONAL: You can dye coconut green to give more of a grass texture (or dye it other colors if you want to). My children don't like coconut, so we didn't do this.
5. Next, you decorate your cupcakes! Let your children use a butter knife to spread the frosting on their cupcake. Then let them decorate with coconut and eggs. This creates a cupcake that looks like eggs in grass. You can also add a licorice stick from one side to the other to be a handle and you suddenly have an Easter basket with eggs instead! I plan do this version this year (photos are from last year), so I will post pics as I get them.