My older son turned 11 today. He asked to have a birthday celebration at school. He knew exactly what he wanted to bring. Sushi cupcakes.
Nigiri
Maki
He was inspired by Clare Crespo's The Secret Life of Food. Crepo uses a sour cream frosting with coconut to simulate rice. My son doesn't like coconut so we just used leftover buttercream from the last birthday party (we freeze any leftovers and it keeps very well). We had to hunt around for a long time to find green fruit leather for the "seaweed." We finally found green apple fruit leather in the produce department at QFC. The kids at school really liked the cupcakes. One girl declared that older son is "a genius!"
Tonight we had his birthday party. He decided he didn't want cake. He wanted tiramisu. We used Modern Classics 2 by Donna Hay. We subbed very strong decaf coffee with sugar for the espresso and coffee liqueur.
We also sprinkled it with shaved dark chocolate and more powdered sugar before serving it. I was worried it wouldn't be sweet enough for the kids. But they all really liked it. The best thing about this is no baking. It's really quick to throw together and can be made ahead of time. I need to remember this for summer events when it's too hot to cook.