Pony Cookie Cupcakes

What?  Oh you read that right.  I'm making Pony Cookie Cupcakes.

It's my niece Ella's 3rd birthday party tomorrow, and we have a tradition of making cupcakes together.  Red Velvet with Heart sprinkles for Valentine's Day, White cake with colorful Zoo Animals for her birthday last year...and this year, I'm proud to debut, The Pony Cookie Cupcake.

Carrot cake cupcakes with green pasture frosting
and two grazing ponies on top

Now this is a fun story.  As you can probably imagine, there will be a real live pony at the birthday party.  This is still a surprise since apparently this pony is very busy and there's actually a chance he may not even show up.  Seriously.  I really want to know what he's doing that makes him so incredibly busy, but I digress.

So in honor of the potential pony rides, I decided to make pony cupcakes.  Herein lies the first problem: what the hell is a pony cupcake?

I googled animal cupcakes.  The most adorable bunny, kitty and puppy cupcakes pop up.  Think cute little whiskers on their easily recognizable faces, topping fabulous little vanilla cupcakes.  Now think of a horse.  Try to draw a horse face, on a cupcake.  Uh huh, now you see the dilemma.

I quickly changed tactics.  If I couldn't put a little horsey face on a cupcake, maybe I could just buy little pony figurines and stick them on the top of the cupcake.  Aha!  Brilliant.  Next problem: where do I find 24 horse figurines that fit perfectly on top of a cupcake?  I'm sure all you moms out there are thinking, duh, a toy store.  Well I don't have a toy store around me nor do I know where to find one.  So I looked at Michaels.  And Target.  And basically everywhere.  No tiny horses.

So then I visited Sur La Table, for cupcake holders (they have the best variety of cupcake holders on the planet, btw).  I found cute little multi-colored confetti cupcake holders, and...(drum roll)...a horse cookie cutter.  OMG.

So now my mind is racing....what if I bake pony cookies, frost them and sprinkle them with colorful glitter, and place them ON TOP of the cupcake.  PONY COOKIE CUPCAKES!  Wow, I'm thinking in the store, I'm kind of a genius.  If I didn't think so before, then this life-changing idea certainly sealed the deal.

And that is the story of the Pony Cookie Cupcake.

Happy 3rd Birthday Ella! (And sorry to all you soon-to-be-sleep-deprived parents with kids who will be eating not just a frosted cupcake, but a frosted cookie too!)

This would be Ella with the pony.  He's dressed as Big Bird because it's not enough that he's a pony.