Goldfish Beach Party Cupcakes

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“Mom! Can I PLEASE have a BEACH birthday party this year?”

“Mom! Can I PLEASE have a POOL PARTY with a BEACH theme this year?”

Yes, that was Lily. About 3 weeks before the last-minute party we somehow managed to pull off. A party that had nothing to do with Mickey and Minnie Mouse (the party theme we’d been kicking around since the last year’s party).

Do you know how fun it is to shop for a beach-y pool party at the end of July when the stores have long since packed away their beach buckets and instead are fully stocked with candy corn and scarecrows?

So it was back-to-the-basics for our party. I even decided to make the cake/cupcakes myself instead of ordering from a local bakery. I knew that I wanted to incorporate Goldfish on top, and after a couple of trial runs, we ended up with some incredibly cute (completely easy to replicate) beach party cupcakes!

You will need:

Cupcakes (any flavor)
White Frosting
Blue Frosting (we just bought an extra container of white and turned it blue with a couple drops of food coloring)
Graham Crackers (crushed, to resemble sand)
Pepperidge Farm Goldfish

How to make:

Frost half of each cupcake with the white frosting. We used these extra tall cupcake liners from IKEA. I under-filled them a tad with batter which made the perfect “lip” for frosting.

Sprinkle white frosting with crushed graham crackers. This part of the cupcake is your “beach.”

Pipe in the empty half of the cupcakes with blue frosting. This is your ocean half!

Place two Goldfish on top of the blue frosting for instant adorable-ness!

I ended up with a little bit of extra batter, so I grabbed a round cake pan and baked up a small cake, just in case we had time to decorate it and use it for the kids’ candles. Bob created this cute matching cake that looked great with the cupcakes!

The cupcakes were a hit! They tasted great and looked perfect with our beachy pool party theme. We saved a ton of money by going the DIY route (I don’t think we spent more than $10 for all 48 cupcakes and the cake).

The birthday kiddos were happy too! :)