Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Saints Peter and Paul Cupcakes


Tomorrow is the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, and since we invited friends over for some Saintly Summer Fun I spent some time this afternoon trying to come up with a snack for all the kids.

My husband suggested making boats/ships for a craft, and so I decided to carry that theme over to the snack as well.   Recalling how those outside of Noah's Ark were destroyed, the ship became an early symbol of the Church with its associations with "The Barque of Peter, the Fisherman."  And although most of St. Paul's missions were accomplished by walking, he also traveled by boat.

Cupcakes and Wrappers:

Any cupcake recipe can be used for these, though my children opted for a "Triple Chocolate" cake mix, reminding us of the Blessed Trinity.

For the cupcake wrappers I used my Cricut with the Cupcake Wrappers Cartridge<.    I love that it cut out a circle of fish all around the cupcake, in addition to the waves. "The fish,  ever-watchful with its unblinking eyes, was one of the most important symbols of Christ to the early Christians. In Greek, the phrase, "Jesus Christ, Son of God Savior," is "Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter." The first letters of each of these Greek words, when put together, spell "ichthys," the Greek word for "fish" (ICQUS ).   Because of the story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the fish symbolized, too, the Eucharist."  ~ Source   

If you don't happen to have a Cricut you can just as easily use blue cupcake liners and add some Candy Fish or Shark Bites around the platter holding the cupcakes.

I also opted to forego using any food coloring in our frosting, and I just plan to tell the kids that the boats are sailing on white water waves, though blue frosting would look pretty too.


Candy Boats and Sails:

To make the boats I just used some Orange Fruit Slices from our grocery store, though when I was looking through the candy aisle so many different candies would have worked great.   My boys liked the idea of molding caramels into the shape of a boat, or using mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  Yum!  I opted for the orange slices since they were the least expensive!

For the sails I decided to use the shields of Sts. Peter and Paul.  I resized them to 2.25" in height, which seemed to work well with a regular sized cupcake.  I printed it out on regular copy paper and made a tiny slit with my x-acto knife, making it much easier to insert a toothpick to be used as the mast.


The Symbolism of the Shields/Sails:

St. Peter's Shield:    Download Document

The Keys are the symbol of St. Peter, the authority of the papacy, and the Church's power to "bind and loose" (Matthew 16:19 and Isaiah 22).  One key represents Excommunication, a locked door to the unrepentant sinner.   The other key stands for Absolution, the open door to the Kingdom of Heaven for the repentant sinner.

St. Paul's Shield:    Download Document

Saint Paul has the sword assigned to him because he was a persecutor of the Church. The book is a symbol of his conversion into the greatest preacher of the Church. The great change in Saint Paul shows itself in this that he afterward speaks of the Word of God and the Sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17).


God our Father, Today you give us the joy of celebrating the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul. Through them your Church first received the faith. Keep us true to their teaching.

Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, pray for us! 
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15 comments:

  1. These are amazingly cute, Jessica! What a great treat for such a wonderful feast. Thanks for sharing!

    P.S. I love the idea of the cupcake cartridge. One more reason I "need" a Cricut! LOL

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  2. Too cute for words, Jessica! And today is my husband's feast day, but we won't be having these. :-( We have a swim meet instead.

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  3. Love this, Jessica! Everything is brilliant. I like the white frosting, too, as it shows off the blue waves of the cupcake wrapper and gives the look of white foamy waves. The Shields were a wonderful idea for the sails.
    love. love. love.

    I might try and do something similar as this today, though it won't be an exact copy....like Sarah, I think I really NEED a Cricut! Especially with the cupcake cartridge. Hmmm, my birthday is coming up in August. I'll have to drop some big hints with my family. ;)

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  4. Hi, Jessica
    Thanks for sharing this snack idea. I'm on vacation with my kids so I couldn't make cupcakes and had to modify your idea. I bought glazed donuts, cut them in half and stood the halves up on a plate (like a "u"). I printed your sails and poked one into each donut boat, then quickly made waves with blue squeeze icing applied on the side of the donuts and a little on the plate. Found some goldfish crackers in my mom's cabinet and stuck them in the waves. Took about 10 minutes to make and my kids loved them! Thanks again!

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  5. these are just awesome. love it!

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  6. Thanks for all the comments! I did have fun making these cupcakes and was very excited with how they turned out.

    The cupcake cartridge is great, but it took a little bit of trial and error to figure out what size I needed to cut the wrappers to make them fit (for some reason that isn't included). I'm trying to remember, but on my personal sized cutter I think I used either the 2" or the 2 1/4" size. When I was looking online I found that on the larger Cricuts you can manually set the length to 8" - which would have been so much easier. I haven't figured out how to set the length on mine yet, if it's possible. I also was only able to get two wrappers out of each piece of 8.5x11 cardstock (which I first had to cut in half), but it was worth the paper and the effort!

    The Cupcake Cartridge also has cupcake toppers that will probably come in handy and lots of cute wrapper options!

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  7. Pam ~ I love how you modified this idea! So creative and easy!!

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  8. Yummy cupcakes! This is definitely a nice way to celebrate and remember the goodness of our beloved Saint Paul and Peter.

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  9. Hi! Is there a way to print out the shields for Saint Peter and Paul? Scribd says the documents have been removed. Thank you!

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    1. Hi Megan! I'm sorry the link isn't working for you. I really need to add them (and all the rest of my documents) to dropbox as an alternative for those you are having trouble with Scribd, but I haven't had a chance to do that yet. In the meantime, I just sent them to you though a Facebook message. God bless!

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  10. Hi, would love if you'd email me a link to the shields too! kawells8@yahoo.com

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    1. I'm sorry I wasn't near a computer earlier today, but I'll email them to you now. I've also uploaded them to Dropbox for anyone else have difficulty with Scribd:

      St. Peter Sail: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9a6i0w0n8rera7m/StPeterSail.pdf?dl=0

      St. Paul Sail: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l4e0oiguq7rhm6r/StPaulSail.pdf?dl=0

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  11. We'll be making these for our Blue Knights Boys' Club meeting on Faith! They'll love these!!! Thank you, Jessica.

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  12. I made these tonight! I always check your blog first when I want a fun liturgical food idea! Thank you for this gift to us!

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