Koki Owl Cupcakes

My little sister, Kourtney (Korn, Koki, Kohn, small brother) recently celebrated a big birthday. Let's just say  she is still a young lady but she might be receiving correspondence from AARP soon. ;)  Her sweet husband put together a nice birthday surprise dinner complete with Kourtney photo masks. We held them up and creepily skulked up behind them when they arrived at the restaurant. She was surprised!

Kourtney is an amazingly talented photographer and an amazingly loving and supportive sister. Also, she is a big fan of owls. For the grand celebration I decided to make two flavors of cupcakes with two different fondant toppers to represent the birthday girl. 

Cameras and Owls!

I started off making full bodied owls, but I thought they were too hefty so I decided to make cool owl heads with big wacky eyes instead. I did keep two full owls, one marked with a "K" and one with a "30" (shhhh. pretend we didn't see that number.)

HoOoooOoooo

High tech, top notch cameras!

For the flavors, I went with the birthday girl's favorite: chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache center and raspberry Swiss meringue butter cream. The charming pink hue came purely from the raspberry puree I added to the butter cream. Naturally lovely and delicious!

Since I am never satisfied with just one flavor, I also made vanilla cupcakes filled with Nutella and frosted with a fluffy Nutella butter cream. I think both flavors were a hit! Hooray!

The lovely birthday girl was so happy with her sweet surprise. 

Happy Birthday, Kourtney!!!