Unicycle Cupcakes

It's birthday time again for my husband and while we are not traveling to a Muni race weekend, I still had unicycles on the mind. 

I wondered about making home made sprinkles.  There are such recipes, but many of them are called confetti and can be cut in shapes. That is what I was looking for. Then one post I read just used fondant and cut out small shapes. Even better.
I did need a tiny unicycle cutter.  I took out my cutter making kit I had used before and found I was out of metal. A couple sites had instructions for making cookie cutters out of a soda can. Because my cutter would be small, this seemed like a perfect plan. I cut up a can and folded the metal onto itself and created a tiny unicycle.

Marshmallow fondant I had made before and felt confident making again. I made up a half a recipe, but easily could have made a quarter. I colored it purple and rolled it out. The mini cutter worked perfectly.  I laid the unicycles out on a cookie sheet and using a butter knife, made spoke impressions. 

For the cupcakes, I figured I would make a healthier version of the box mix again.  Instead of just Greek yogurt, I had added a bit of water.  But I also read about using coffee with chocolate cake to bring out the chocolate flavor.  Some people mention that the cake is a bit flat when using yogurt, so I added an egg white too. My recipe ended up being 1 egg white, 1 full cup of plain Greek yogurt (6 oz container plus a little), almost a cup of cooled coffee, and Betty Crocker Super Moist Fudge cake mix. It yielded 20 cupcakes.  They are just right in flavor and texture. I baked them in papers for 18 minutes.
Then it was on to the buttercream frosting. I made up a recipe using two sticks of butter, 3 cups of powdered sugar, 1 TB of vanilla and 2 TB of milk. It was enough to thickly frost 17 cupcakes using a decorator bag with no tip.
Finally I added the unicycles and some confetti sprinkles.