Surgery and Minions

My baby girl had to have surgery the other day to remove a cyst in her throat.  I noticed a bump on her neck about a month ago, made a call to her Dr. and he sent us for a CT which resulted in being told she needed surgery to remove it.  It's been pretty nerve wracking around here during this process but I am happy to report that she is doing AMAZING following her surgery and already wants to be up out of bed, riding her bike, playing at the park and going swimming.  I told her the Dr. says she can't do any of those things for 10 days... she's not happy about it to say the least! Anyway, the night before her surgery she couldn't eat anything after midnight (no breakfast the morning of) so we let her stay up late to eat something right before midnight.

We decided to watch Despicable Me because it's a family favorite (seriously HILARIOUS!) and I wanted to make her a special treat so I decided to finally make those Minion cupcakes that have been all over Pinterest. Of course they had to be vegan so store bought Twinkies would not do!  That was no problem though because I happen to own my very own Twinkie pan!  Doesn't every one?  Well you should! 




I took the lazy way and used store bought (Pillsbury) cake mix and frosting because I wanted as much cuddle time as possible with my princess.  A LOT of the store bought cake mixes and frostings ARE vegan, they are just loaded with tons of other crap too (artificial flavors, colors and preservatives), so I try to make my cakes organic from scratch as much as possible.  However, it is nice to know you can grab one of these cheap mixes (the cake mix was .99 and the frosting was 1.49) and whip up a cake in a few minutes!  Just check the labels (as always) to ensure the ones you pick are vegan, then prepare with vegan ingredients using Ener-G egg replacer equivalent to the amount of eggs in the recipe and if it calls for milk or butter use vegan versions of those.  With 1 box of cake mix I was able to make a whole pan of "twinkies" and 8 cupcakes.  It turned out I had 4 extra twinkies because you cut them in half to make the Minion toppers.  Also, I realized after I pumped some of the frosting into the twinkies that this was an AWESOME way to make "mess-free" cupcakes!!  Just make the twinkies, and pump in the frosting (the tool comes with the pan) and you have "inside-out" cupcakes with cake on the outside and frosting on the inside which in my house would lead to WAY less cupcake mess!

I was going to buy Smarties to use for the eyes but when I was racing through the grocery aisles speed reading labels I saw stearic acid on the Smarties label, so I passed on them and just decided to do frosting eyes.  Stearic acid can come from either animal or plant sources and I just didn't want to take the time right then to research it.  I now know that Smarties are vegan, so FYI if you want to make these with the Smartie eyes they are A-OK!

No real recipe just follow the directions on your cake box, let cool and decorate.

Vegan "Twinkies"  I overfilled a couple with frosting and had to eat 'em since they were not useable as Minion toppers

They look soo authentic!

Carefully cut them in half

Pipe on your faces, the eyes were a little tricky, if you use Smarties it will be a LOT easier.  Also pipe some frosting "glue" on to the bottoms to hold them on to the cupcake base.

Frost the cupcakes and then stick on the Minions

VEGAN MINIONS!!

My Princess about to watch the movie and munch her Minion

Yummy Minion!!

The Minion aftermath

After the movie and the Minion munching she got some sleep and then we had to be up bright and early to get to the hospital around 7 am.

**Warning there is a graphic photo of her surgery below**

If that sort of thing bothers you, you may want to skip it.  

All decked out in her hospital "jammies"

They gave her an oral sedative to help calm any separation anxiety when they came to take her back.  This is her being silly with Daddy as it started to kick in.

And mellowing out reading a story right before they came to take her back.  She kept her piggy with her the whole time <3

Her surgery turned out to be a bit more complicated than anticipated.  The surgeon thought from the CT scan that the cyst was about the size of a marble.  You can see the bump on her neck that we noticed about a month ago.  Once they got in there though he saw that there was not one but 3 cysts, one behind the other all the way up to the base of her tongue.  Her hyoid bone had to be removed, and she has about a 1 1/2 inch incision in her neck.  The surgeon came and looked at her neck folds prior to surgery and tucked the incision into her top neck fold so unless she is looking up at the sky you cannot even see it, and even then once it heals it should blend in with the natural crease in her neck.

It was an outpatient surgery so after a while in recovery she was discharged home with us.  The first night and following day were quite the ordeal as she was just so out of it from all the anesthesia, she was fighting her pain meds and just generally very uncomfortable and unhappy, which means that I was an absolute mess of emotions trying to do anything I could to make her feel better.  Thankfully yesterday was a lot better and today, she is almost back to her normal self.  She has not complained about pain at all yesterday or so far today.  The human body is an amazing thing!  She is my super human :) and just can't wait to get her doc's clearance to do all her favorite things again.