Animal Cupcakes!

 So both N&A are working at a lovely summer camp at the YMCA. We are both counselors for a "theme camp" and last weeks theme was "Wild Kingdom". Now being as awesome as we are, N&A decided to make some scrum-diddily-umptious cupcakes for the little kiddies for the "Fun Friday!" Now being an animal themed week we wanted to do something related, and decided to do animal cupcakes! Of course we didn't exactly have all the materials to do the decorating since N is the one who has all the cake decorating supplies in Indiana! But we tried to make-do with what we had! 

So we went over to the Wal-Mart and bought some delicious Nutter Butter cookies, Swedish Fish, Marshmallows (big and little!), and some starburst! These delicious supplies were used to decorate our awesome cupcakes! We had to use ziploc baggies to pipe out our icing too! But it still looked half-way decent! 

Now when we were doing this, our favorite cupcakes were the hippos! And we thought for sure that they would go first with our campers! Of course not all goes as we think, since we also thought our cupcakes would be about ten times cuter! But oh well! We thought they were adorable! So here ya go!

Cupcake Ingredients:

1 1/2 Cups Unsalted Butter

2 Cups Sugar

5 Eggs

4 Large Egg Whites

2 tsp. Vanilla Extract

4 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour

2 tsp. Baking Powder

2 tsp. Baking Soda

1/2 tsp. Salt

1 1/4 Cups Milk

Cupcake Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350° and line your cupcake pans! Its a lot of cupcakes for this recipe! 

Sift or whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Put your egg whites in a separate bowl  and whip until medium peaks form! Set these aside for later!

Start of by creaming the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs in one at a time, mixing completely before adding the next egg! Then you need to mix in your 1 1/4 c. milk and the flour mixture alternately, mixing very well after each. Beat on medium-high speed for 2 minutes after all the stuff is mixed in. :) Last you need to fold in your stiffened egg whites! Make sure you don't deflate your egg whites when doing this! be nice and delicate =) 

Put these in your cupcake pans, filling about 3/4 full and then pop them in the oven for about 20-21 minutes! Then they are done! Yay! Let cool completely before decorating with your awesomeness!

Beware the delicious Cake Batter!!!

Easy Vanilla Buttercream:(adopted from Annie's Eats)

2 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. heavy cream 

Directions:

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat butter at medium-high speed until smooth, about 20 seconds.  Add confectioners’ sugar and salt; beat at medium-low speed until most of the sugar is moistened, about 45 seconds.  Scrape down the bowl and beat at medium speed until mixture is fully combined, about 15 seconds.  Scrape bowl, add vanilla and heavy cream, and beat at medium speed until incorporated, about 10 seconds.  Then increase the speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down bowl once or twice.   

Separate your icing into smaller bowls and dye each bowl different colors. we used green, yellow, orange, blue, and pink!

Licking the Beaters of the Icing! The best Part! <3

Decoration List:

Mini-Marshmallows

Regular Marshmallows

Red and Pink Starburst

Swedish Fish

Red and Pink Sprinkles

Nutter Butter Cookies

To decorate, choose what animals you want to do. Here is what we did!

Alligator:

 Ice the whole cupcake with green icing, Stick on a Nutter Butter cookie with about half on the cupcake and half sticking off of it, and place about a tsp. of green icing on top of that, make sure you can see the lines of the cookie through the spread out icing so that it looks like scales! Cut a mini marshmallow in half and squish it on the long sides to make it a little more rounded, and stick this on the top of the Nutter Butter thats on the cupcakes for the eyes! Use a small round tipped piping bag or ziploc bag with a very tiny piece of the corner cut off, to cover the sides of he cookie and around the back and tops of the eyeballs! Take white icing and pipe small lines on the 'mouth' of the gator, for sharp teeth! Then add dots to the middle of the eyes, and sprinkle with green glitter! Tada! You're done!

Hippopotamus:

Pretty much the same as the alligator, but use pink icing, or whatever color you want to use, and use cheerios for the ears and nose. Pipe small round white dots for eyes on the Nutter Butter and another small colored dot in the middle of the white for the pupil. Then it's done!

A's Finished Hippos!

Lion:

Cover your cupcake with whatever color you want your Lion, then pipe the 'mane' on the outside of the cupcake with a small star tipped piping bag. Use a darker color than the one you used for the lion color. Use a mini-marshmallow that is cut in half diagonally and dip the sticky side in red/pink sprinkles. Stick these in the mane so they are slightly sticking out. for the nose use red starburst, cut into pieces and then rolled into the cat-like shape of a nose. It should look kind of like a heart, but not such a crease on the top of the heart. Use icing or rolled starburts pieces to make the mouth and whiskers! Pipe the eyes on with white and another color of icing.

N Decorating the Lion!

Pig:

The pig cupcakes are so cute! All you need to do is cover your cupcake in pink icing, cut a regular marshmallow in half and stick it on the pick cupcake. Cover that with the icing too. Use the cheerios as the pig ears and cover with icing.Pipe on eyes and the dots on the nose! So easy and super cute!

Penguins:

The penguins are N's personally favorite! She LOVES penguins! So using white, pipe a semi-circle on the bottom of the cupcake. Fill with the white icing. Using black/blue icing cover the rest of the cupcakes. Pipe big oval eyes on the blue part, then using a starburst that has been cut in half diagonally into a triangle, stick it on the cupcake a little lower than the eyes! And you're done!

So there are a lot more animals you can make, and we made a couple more but they didn't look as good! These were are favorites, and the kids favorites too! Out of all the cupcakes, the lions went first, then the pigs, then the penguins, then the lions! The Hippos were last! But it was ok because N&A got to eat their favorites!

Luvyerguts<3

N&A