Sheep, ram, or goat…it doesn’t matter so much. These cupcakes are the bomb regardless of what animal they are actually. I was so stinkin’ proud of them that we’re currently on our second batch this afternoon. The girls Chinese school gala on Sunday is going to have these babies at their bake sale table. And, if history proves itself, these are going to bring in some cashola.
I’ll share how to make these guys in case any of you still have some Chinese New Year parties coming up…or this blog still exists in 12 years and someone happens to be searching for Spring Festival snack ideas.
I used these amazing cupcake and vanilla buttercream frosting recipes from a friend of mine. I don’t even like cake but these cupcakes are life changing. They’re pretty easy as far as baking goes (I’m typically a pathetic cake-mix type of gal), and they taste so good that Helen and I have been eating them plain for breakfast and justifying our actions by saying they are not any worse than a muffin.
In addition to what you need for those recipes, grab some foil cupcake liners, candy eyeballs (that’s just sorta fun to say), banana runts (yes, I’m sure Wegmans loved me after I stood there for 10 minutes and got 1/4 lb of JUST the bananas out of their bulk candy), a bag of mini marshmallows, and half-egg chocolate candies. I found these super cheap chocolate-covered marshmallow candies in the bulk foods too.
Make the cupcakes, and let cool a while. Make the icing, making sure you add enough powdered sugar to make it pretty stiff so it will work like glue for you.
Frost the cupcakes one at a time, then stick mini marshmallows all over the top until it’s covered. Put icing on the back of one of the chocolates as glue and gently place it on top of the mini marshmallows toward one side to be the face. Stick two eyeballs onto the chocolate using some icing as glue. Then, dip an end of one of the runts in the icing bowl and stick it near the top of the beast’s chocolate head between marshmallows so it sort of stands up. Do it again for the second horn…or whatever that is called.
That’s it. Way easier than I expected and a big hit…even though most of us just took all the marshmallows off and ate everything underneath.
