Look at these beautiful cupcakes that one of my co-workers brought into work! Don’t they look just like sushi rolls? (However they’re 100% fish free, they just LOOK like sushi…compliments to the baker!)

He was selling them as part of a national bake sale contest called Cupcakes for a Cause, a fund raiser for CancerCare for Kids.

If you LOVE baking and would like to use your talent for a good cause, join the cause and organized your own bake sale! More information is on their site. The bake sale is running through November 1st, 2008, so there’s plenty of time to get your bake on.

To kick start your cupcake creativity try this recipe for Sushi Cupcakes (courtesy of the baker, thanks Jen!)

Sushi Cupcakes

These can be made with your favorite homemade cake and white/vanilla icing recipe, but if you’re short on time, the box mixes and frosting work just fine.

Bake cupcakes as normal and let cool all the way through.  Once the cupcakes have cooled carve some in a cylinder shape so they will be slightly smaller than the average cupcake (this will make the sushi rolls) and carve the others into rectangles and trimming the bottoms about 1/4ths of an inch (this will make the nigiri sushi). To make the "rice" mix together your white frosting and 3-4 cups of fresh shredded coconut.  For the seaweed wrapping you can use Fruit Roll-Ups or Fruit-by-the-Foot.  I prefer Fruit-by-the-Foot as it seemed to stick better around the cupcakes.  Wrap the cylinder cupcakes in the Fruit-by-the-Foot along the sides, and top with the coconut icing, add Swedish Fish, jelly beans, sprinkles etc..  For the nigiri sushi top with icing first and wrap the Fruit-by-the-Foot around the width of the cake.  You can also add Swedish fish to these, it seemed to be a nice touch.

You can add food coloring to the frosting & coconut mix, I added a little red to make some look like spicy tuna rolls.  You can also use green gumpaste rolled in a small ball on the side to make it look like wasabi!

Have fun!!