Faerie Foods and Baking Fun!

What do Faeries eat? Toadstools, fairy butter, and a whole lot of things humans might find odd or downright inedible - but we can still have fun with faerie foods with the right recipes!

As many of you know, I do a lot of reading about faerie myths and legends to try to make my stories as true to life, or as true to myth, as possible. In this latest book, the zany character of Tabitha, the tylwyth teg, eats some strange foods, including her own homemade fae butter, flower petals, and even toadstool soup.

There are some foods the fae eat that humans are known to love, such as honeycakes, elderberries and so on. But other things, like toadstools, are better left to the fae. That doesn't mean that humans can't use their imaginations to make toadstools and moss edibles out of human-friendly recipes.

This weekend I tried making some fairy desserts of my own using recipes I found on Pinterest. On Sunday, I visited an old friend and some relatives, both of whom have young children, so I prepared by making these cupcakes I thought they would enjoy. I should add that I'm not a culinary creative who bakes often or cooks elaborate foods. I'm less of an "outside the box" baker and more of a straight out of the box mixer, but these recipes were simple enough for me to follow.

Toadstool Cupcakes:

This delightful pin of toadstool cupcakes was an easy to follow, neat idea that I just had to try.

I started by making regular chocolate cupcakes (I usually add a little extra flour and sugar to the box mixes, but I don't make them from scratch.)

Then, I simply frosted with the red frosting and added some upside down white chocolate chips and voila! They look almost "Mario" video game themed, but they also have a fairy feel to them.

Moss Cupcakes

I found the link for this edible moss on Pinterest as well, though the recipe itself was on SassySprinklesBlog on Wordpress. I actually deviated a little bit from this recipe, using gram cracker crumbles and mixing the "moss" with vanilla frosting. The mix came out like this:

Once the cupcakes were baked, I put this mix in as the oven was cooling. It was only in the oven for about 5 minutes. The mix became malleable and I was able to shape bits of it into tops for the cupcakes. Once that was done, I added sugar flowers to the tops to give it that natural woodlands feel to it.

I also baked some chocolate chip cookies with a little cocoa topping the individual cookies to make them look like boulders. I'm not sure if that idea worked so well, but the cookies were delicious. (I'm guilty of taste-testing my work more than I probably should!)

I used the left over "moss" to decorate a little Moss Hill scene and take a few pictures of some of the cupcakes (you can see them on Pinterest). The house is actually one of my grandmother's decorations, but I couldn't resist putting it in the background, it reminded me so much of what I was picturing as Tabitha's house. She was kind enough to let me borrow it for a picture or two. (Not Tabitha, my grandmother did.)

The rest of the cupcakes I packed up to take with me. Everyone seemed to like them, so I would say they were a hit!

For Easter, I want to try something a little more challenging and make some variation of this Tree Stump Cake. I have a feeling it's going to turn out something like an episode of Nailed It! Whether I fail it or actually do nail it, I'll let you know how it goes. For now, these simple recipes were a good start for me and I really had fun making them!