Candy of Summer: Cotton Candy Cupcakes

This is cupcake is for week four of Hoosier Homemades Cupcake Challenge, AND week one of my 'wire my mouth shut' diet attempt.  This week's theme is "Candy."  Maybe Cotton Candy isn't a traditional 'candy,' but...it's in the name, and they sell it on the candy aisle, and after exploring a few options, I think this probably defines summer candy for me.  Every August, the circus comes into town for a few weeks, and I went to the circus every year...and ate cotton candy at each event when I was younger.  I recently discovered you can purchase cotton candy for a lot less than a circus ticket, and their food booth prices.  I made some mini cotton candy puffs here, and I found the cotton candy at Walmart in a tub.  This go round, I found a bag of cotton candy at the Dollar Store (it's also currently in the Dollar Section at Target).  I tried out a few decorating options for these cupcakes.  I love mini everything, so first up is the mini-cotton candy topped cupcakes. 
Cupcake Instructions:  Bake a white cake mix as instructed on the box.  Ice with a strawberry icing.  I liked this combination because cotton candy is a sugar flavored candy.  If  both the cupcake and icing were strawberry flavored it would have been to overwhelming, but I think the white cake mix represented the 'sugar' well, and the strawberry gave a hint of the flavor.  I tried to give the cupcakes a little bit of a 'messy look'....b/c cotton candy is fluffy and sort of untammed.  (I bought the pink/polka dot liners at Michael's.)

For the mini toppers:  I bought Bugles (at the Dollar Store), cotton candy, and white chocolate morsels. 

I melted the chocolate, dipped the Bugles, and then let them dry on a piece of wax paper. 

I placed each Bugle on a cupcake, and added a little fluff of cotton candy to the top of the bugle.  You could hold them in place with a dab of chocolate or icing. 

Alternative Icing:  I also tried out an approach with a little more drama.  I like drama....in a dessert.  I put huge mounds of cotton candy on each cupcake. 

The package comes with three flavors, so you (and when I say "you"....I'm speaking to my future self) could ice each cupcake with strawberry/lemon/koolaide flavored (vanilla) berry icing, or just vanilla icing dyed yellow/blue/pink and then top with the three flavors of cotton candy.  One bag makes 6 dramatic cupcakes.  (I bought these multi colored dot liners at Hobby Lobby.)

Here is one little warning about cotton candy.  Top them right before you serve them, or store them in an air tight container, especially if you live in a humid environment.  Air+Cotton Candy=Magic Disappearing Act.
Linking To:
Hoosier Homemade