Burger Cupcakes

I am really excited about this post, so I'm going to skip the banter usually found in these introductions and get straight to it. I have seen these adorable burger cupcakes all over the internet, a million different times - and every time I see it I pester my husband for his opinion of how cute they are ("Aren't these amazing? Aren't they cool? I so need to make these. How cute are they, on a scale of one to ten?" My husband puts up with so much.)

So finally, I've found (or perhaps invented) an excuse to make my very own version of these awesome cupcakes. I used store-bought frosting, but I made my cupcakes from scratch. Oh, and instead of using brownies for the burger patties as in the original, I used chocolate cupcakes. I love brownies as much as the next person - probably more, if I'm being completely honest with myself - but I thought cake-on-cake would probably taste better and have a better consistency. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of brownies with frosting.

The recipe I used for my yellow cupcakes came from Mel's Kitchen Cafe, and the one for my chocolate cupcakes came from Taste of Home. The latter recipe was meant for making a cake but I changed the baking time to adapt to my cupcakes.

My yield ended up being 39, with about five or so others that were destroyed in the experimentation process. See, my cupcakes didn't turn out nice and even on top like in the pictures. My first ones had giant "muffin tops", and my second batch (which I made smaller after seeing how the first ones came out) had their middles rise but the edges were flat. So I had to mess around with a few before finding the right way to assemble them.

Then came the frosting. I used Wilton food colors - Leaf Green, Buttercup Yellow, and Red-Red. For the final touch, I lightly brushed the top of each "burger" and sprinkled on some gold sugar crystals for the sesame seeds.

Aren't they cool?! Not as perfect as Bakerella's of course, but I'm super happy with them.

Both cake mixes turned out well enough. The yellow cake tasted like a sweet cornbread, I thought, which was fine since there was going to be quite a bit of frosting. The chocolate cake could have been better in my opinion but seeing as it made up only a tiny part of the burger, it hardly mattered. However, if I were going to make a chocolate cake from scratch, I'd definitely opt for a different recipe.

These were a hit and tasted great, so I definitely recommend you give them a try sometime! They're a little labor-intensive, but worth it when everyone tells you again and again how cool they are.