This week, I created a cupcake challenge for my Advanced and AP Art Students.

Entitled, “Hey Cupcake!  What’s Up?,” it started on Thursday with them making beautiful sketches of 3 different kinds of vegan cupcakes: 2 from Whole Foods (an Oreo flavored and a peanut butter flavored), and 1 that I made: Red Velvet from the recipe for “Crimson Velvet” cupcakes in the fabulous cookbook: Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa (who needs no last name, like Cher or Madonna…or Prince).

My students pronounced my cupcakes absolutely divine as opposed to Whole Foods’ pricey ones that had flavorless, dry cake and grainy frosting. They looked pretty but mine were delicious AND pretty…don’t you think? 

So, I just want to put in a plug for the book.  I have made and adapted SO many from that book and they never fail!   Thanks Isa (Chandra Moskowitz)!

P.S.  I’ll post images of my students’  finished artwork soon!  But, in the meantime, here is a detail of my teacher sample entitled “She Wore Red Velvet.”  Mine is about body image/eating disorder/food obsession. (Topics with which I am only too familiar from my teens/20s…and the residual.) Part of the piece is painted with coffee! I was up working on it after my husband  and I went to dinner until 12:30 this morning. Did I earn an A? (Sorry about the image quality…it was taken this morning at 6:20 with my not-so-great ‘Droid camera phone on the kitchen counter!)