My 10 year old’s BFF had a birthday recently and I offered to help out with the party planning by making cupcakes. Before I even said it out loud I knew they would have to be narwhals. She is a little bit obsessed, and who wouldn’t be? Narwhals are the unicorns of the sea, after all. I went into this project pretty blind but they came out pretty cute in the end!

I purchased these specialty cupcake wrappers from Wilton at our local party store. I believe they are supposed to look like flower petals but I thought they would give the effect of the narwhal emerging from the deep.

I dyed white buttercream light gray and mounded the frosting so it was thicker in the middle creating a head. Black dyed frosting was piped into eyes and a smile and pretzel sticks became the signature horn. (The birthday girl got a long, gold candle as her horn.)

For the flippers I used Neco Wafers. The blue gray ones pictured here were hard to find! Each roll of candy had between zero and two of these licorice flavored wafers. For most of the cupcakes I used light purple and they looked great.

For the water spouts coming from the narwhal’s blowhole I cut up these sour candy straws into four pieces and then each piece I cut half of the piece into four strips so it would look frayed.

I am so pleased with how these finished up. They were so cute and the birthday girl was thrilled!