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life in the basement has come and gone. we loved living underground, but are excited to practice maintaining a home. join me as i journal chapter two of our life, as we save up, look forward, and plan for a home in the city. as we seek after our great God to glorify Him daily, join in as we figure out what it means to radically pursue Him in "everyday life"

30 June 2011

dan's birthday cupcakes!

so i've FINALLY gotten a chance to settle down and blog a bit! i had an EXCELLENT birthday (which i will write more on later) which has kept me busy the last couple of days. so now, let the blogging begin!

i had mentioned last week that i was making dan hamburger cupcakes for his birthday. friday night around 10:30, i finally got to work. first, i baked the yellow cupcakes. ashley and i took the wilton cake decorating class last summer, and in we learned that duncan hines boxed cake mixes are the best things to use for the most consistant results. i have a from-scratch recipe for yellow cake that i like even better, but because it was raining and i was short on time (and buttermilk) i whipped up these guys. per the counsel of wilton, i add in an extra egg and a box of instant vanilla pudding mix.



while the cupcakes were baking, i whipped up some of dan's favorite brownies. i made them in a big 11x17 jelly roll pan so that i could get the most "burgers" from one box (in the future, i would make a double batch of brownies and cook them in a smaller pan, because they kind of ended up looking like mcdonalds hamburgers because of their shrimpy size)



while the brownies were in the oven, i started mixing frosting. now, normally i would whip up some homemade buttercream, but i happened to have one last container of canned frosting, and since i was just using it as a "condiment", i gave it a good stir and started coloring. the yellow and green batches turned out great, but unfortunately, the red turned out looking a little pinkish maroon. i have never been able to make good red frosting. so, i just gave up and figured, who needs a lot of ketchup anyways.


so now, i just had to start assembling. i had let both the cupcakes and brownies cool, so i was ready to work! i used my bread knife to cut my cupcakes in half, right below the tops of them.




once that was done, i used a biscuit cutter with scalloped edges to cut out "hamburgers" from the brownies. to ensure that they didn't slide off, i put a little spot of icing on the bottom half of the cupcake, then layered the brownie burger, and topped it with some squirts of "mustard" "ketchup" and "lettuce."

and here were the results!




saddly, when i showed up at moms the next morning to take them to the little guy, i found him very sick. he had come home from youth camp with some sort of nasty stomach bug, so he didn't get to enjoy any. i have promised him a birthday re-do, and i will make these again for him then.
on a side note, the rest of the fam enjoyed them and there were none leftover!

so there you go- hamburger cupcakes. way cute. way easy. quite a hit. definitely will make them again!

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