Hamburger Cupcakes!

My Father’s Day baking project this year was Hamburger Cupcakes!

Summer is around the corner and my boyfriend and his dad love the grill.  Last week, when my best friend brought this up to me, I knew I had to try it 🙂

Hamburger cupcakes!

To find the original recipe, please follow this link: http://www.bakerella.com/fast-food-fun/

Prepare for these to take a good amount of time to make however, they are composed of the simplest form of baking as in using baking mixes.  I haven’t used mixes in a long time but seeing as I had an afternoon to prepare for it, I felt it was the best choice.  I used Duncan Hines baking mixes for the moist yellow cake and fudge brownies.  The original chose Betty Crocker and Pillsbury instead.  I don’t have those available here so I used what I could find and improvised 🙂

Hamburger cupcakes inside

The hardest part was making the right color icing and decorating it.  This was possibly the best control I’ve had and it still looks a bit weird.  But, when you put the top on it, aside from having very pastel colored condiments, they do look quite like burgers, right?

I ended up making 12 Hamburger Cupcakes and a piles of “fries” from sugar cookies.  I somehow forgot to take pictures of them.  I used the President’s Choice Sugar Cookie mix.  They are quite delicious 🙂 It would make for the whole Happy Meal concept but dessert style!

I had 24 cupcakes so guess what I did with the rest? I used the remaining icing (which I used as they recommended Duncan Hines Home-style Creamy Vanilla Icing) and decorated some cupcakes!

I was pretty happy with the results and everyone loved it! It seems to be a very creative and sweet hit. 🙂

Its an awesome hit! If you get the chance, maybe you can whip it up for a barbecue party or next year’s Father’s day? Whatever you want, this is just so fun to make.  Time-consuming but very fun! 🙂

Happy Monday everyone! 🙂

Banana Cupcakes with Honey Cinnamon Frosting

Friday FINALLY came around after this crazy week.  This week, the star of this week’s recipe has to my overripe bananas sitting (or that were sitting) on my counter top.  Mom’s orders, can’t really ignore them even if I’m 26.  HAHA! I haven’t done cupcakes since October. Man, that’s a long time, no? If you missed those, you can check out my Glow in the Dark Cupcakes right HERE.  (<–These were a huge hit and super cute.)  Honestly, I got scared of doing the frosting, but its okay the frosting for the ones I did last night was easier.  And I need to empty my mind after a long week, so lets go!

The recipe is from Martha Stewart‘s site.  Here’s the link: http://www.marthastewart.com/314063/banana-cupcakes-with-honey-cinnamon-fros

Just remember that the Honey Cinnamon Frosting is a separate recipe that is linked to that page.  If you want to know just how to make that, you can get it right here at this link: http://www.marthastewart.com/336911/honey-cinnamon-frosting

This is the whole deal with frosting and all. They give you the option of garnishing the banana right before serving but that would mean I would have to devour the rest of the banana also.

As usual, I do some modifications to the recipes. One, I halved the recipe for the frosting because I only frosted half the batch.  The normal batch looks like this right out of the oven.

Another thing is that this looked like it would be very sweet.  At least I tend to have that feeling from some of the other recipes I’ve done from Martha Stewart’s site.  So I went 1/2 cup of sugar instead of 3/4 cup.  My mom still has to try them so she’s the final judge on that one.  That’s about all the changes I did do.

With all that said, I thought these cupcakes were fantastic.  Even with the frosting, it was JUST right.  The frosting is super nice and fluffy.  Its like banana wrapped with honey-cinnamon explosion in my mouth. I’m not a huge fan of eating too much of banana-flavored baked goods but these ones were just super good.  The cupcake texture wasn’t fluffy also, not too wet or not too dry.

I would recommend this recipe.  Its easy to make and tastes delicious.

Who likes banana flavored desserts? Whats your favorite kind? Share them with me, it’ll inspire me to try it out, if I haven’t already 🙂

Have a great weekend everyone!