Bug-themed cupcake cakes

1. To create a butterfly, arrange 25 cupcakes into a butterfly shape with a long column of five cupcakes down the center for the butterfly's body. Create the wings by using columns of cupcakes in varying numbers. 2. Use a cake icer to cover the cupcakes with icing and smooth using an offset spatula and a paper towel. 3. Create various shapes on the butterfly by using cookie cutters to mark the icing. Then, outline the shapes in black icing using round tip No. 3. 4. Fill in some of the shapes using an airbrush and various colors. You also can fill in the shapes with icing. Airbrush blue around the outer edge of the cake. Cut a pipe cleaner in half and shape into antennae. Place them under-neath the top cupcake that has been piped to be the butterfly's head. 1. Arrange 26 cupcakes into a serpentine pattern to create a caterpillar on the move. Position a small half-sphere cake at one end for the head of the caterpillar. You don't need a specialty pan to create the sphere; bake the cake in any type of bowl. 2. Ice each cupcake individually using three shades of green icing and three different star tips: 4B, 825 and 863. 3. Ice the round cake with red icing and smooth. Use black fuzzy pipe cleaners to form the antennae and the legs of the caterpillar. Poke the antennae into the cake, and place the legs under the cupcakes. 4. Use a large round tip No. 7 tip to pipe eyes and a mouth. 1. Arrange 19 cupcakes into a rough hexagon. 2. Use a cake icer to ice like a sheet cake. Highlight the edges and add some lines in the center in yellow using an airbrush. Use grass tip 234 and green icing to add a border. Pipe an appropriate message in the center using round tip No. 800. Place sugar bug layons, and finish the design by piping dotted lines for flight patterns on the cake board. Like many girls of her generation, Ashley Vicos' love of baking began at age 5 with an Easy-Bake Oven. That love has become her career as she now owns Atlanta-based Sweet Ashley's, a commercially licensed cake studio, where she creates custom cakes and teaches cake decorating classes. Vicos stars in her own show–Have Cake, Will Travel–airing on the Food Network, and has competed in several televised decorating challenges. Cupcake cakes are easy to create, lend themselves to creative and unique designs and are faster to produce than decorating cupcakes individually. Offer these creative cakes as both custom orders and generic designs in your display case that customers can pick up anytime. These fun pull-apart cakes are easy to serve and the perfect dessert to offer in places where knives, forks and plates are a hassle.