Picture Book Month: Making Pupcakes Doggy Cupcakes

Did you know that November is Picture Book Month?  Here in The Jersey Momma household, we're picture book enthusiasts, so I'm more than excited to join my fellow bloggers in celebrating this fantastic event.  Many thanks to Krystal of Healthy Happy Thrifty Family for inviting me to participate!

Today we celebrate the adorable book A Dog is a Dog by Stephen Shaskan.  Can you hear me squealing over the absolute cuteness of the illustrations? We loved watching the funny things the dog was doing in the story, especially ice skating on a kiddie pool.  The drawings were bright and colorful, and the text was bouncy and rhyming.  Kids love to anticipate what's coming next and try to finish the sentence for you.

A Dog is a Dog by Stephen Shaskan, available on Amazon

In honor of Picture Book Month and this super cute story, we decided to make some 'pupcakes' to enjoy after the book.  It was so much fun baking, decorating and eating them!

Stephen Shaskan's A Dog is a Dog (from Amazon.com)

How to Make Your Own Pupcakes

You can make your pupcakes before the story to enjoy while you're reading, or use the story as design inspiration and create them afterwards!  

You Will Need:

-boxed cake mix (or a cake mix recipe of your choice)
-cupcake liners
-frosting flavor of  your choice (we used chocolate)
-decorating items: sprinkles, M&M's, decorator icing, small cookies, candy eyes, etc.
*we used Bel-Vita chocolate cookie bites for the pup's ears, but you can use any combination of cookies that works for you.

Gather your ingredients.

We had an assortment of decorations for our pupcakes- sprinkles, candy eyes, m&ms, candy hearts...

Bake your cupcakes and allow them to cool.  Then, frost them!

We chose to use a frosting gun, but you can use just a regular spatula to spread your frosting, too.

The frosting gun gave our pupcakes a 'furry' look!

Create your pupcakes!  Use cookies, candies and sprinkles to make your cupcakes look like puppies.

We found that each one had its own personality.  The Jersey Momma's Boy helped to create the orange one.  It was his idea to use different colored M&M's for the noses.

You can participate in Picture Book Month, too.  Visit their website for more information, or check out their calendar of books that you can read and share each day of the month. It's no longer a current program, but you can still use the old calendars as a guide for what books to read during the month.

You can purchase Stephen Shaskan's books through my Amazon affiliate link below, or you can find them at your local library.

I'm so honored to be a Picture Book Month Ambassador!  I wear this badge with pride:

Happy reading!