Cheeseburger Cupcakes

I made these cute little cupcakes a few times this past summer. Once for my birthday, which fell on Memorial Day, and again for my 8 year old niece's birthday party a month later. They were a huge hit and I had a ton of people ask me how I did it, so I just have to pass it along!

To start, you'll need 24 yellow cupcakes and 24 little round brownies, and some red, yellow, and green cake decorating icing with decorative tips. I just used box mixes for the cupcakes and the brownies. The cupcakes were made exactly like the box says. For the brownies, I mixed up the batter according to the directions on the box. Instead of pouring the batter into a pan, though, I lined a couple of cupcake tins with paper liners and added about a half inch of batter into each of those. I only baked them for about 10 minutes or so...they cook fast when you're making brownies this small. Keep a close eye on them!

Remove the papers and cut the cupcake in half horizontally. This is your bun.

Put the brownie on your bun.

Now it's time for the icing. To start, use the flat tip to add your yellow icing. I didn't want a huge glob of icing on these, so I just made a square around the edges. If you're an icing lover, you can totally cover the whole brownie! (Hint: if you make a square, it really looks a lot like a slice of cheese.)

Next, put a small tip on the red icing and add some ketchup to your burger. Try to get close to the edges so you can still see it once you put the top on.

Time to add some lettuce! I used the flower icing tip and added a few dollops of green icing around the edges.

Replace the cupcake top and you're done!

And, since I seem to enjoy overdoing things, I took these little burgers one step further. When I made them for my niece's birthday party, I made sugar cookie fries to go with them. After all, what's a burger with no fries? They weren't hard to make at all. Just cut sugar cookie dough into square shaped cookies to bake them, then cut the finished cookies into strips. Put it all on a little paper tray with a scoop of ice cream, and you have a fun alternative to traditional cake and ice cream!