My daughter and son have their birthday's 5 days apart. So each year between the family parties, the school birthday parties and then their actual birthdays, I have roughly a week and a half of baking cupcakes and cakes. With my son's birthday being at the end of the week, his school birthday was bumped to this week. So that gave me time to plan something special for his school party.
My son really loves animals and I thought I would make him Monkey Cupcakes. I found this Jungle Animal Cupcake recipe on the Betty Crocker website. The video showed step by step instructions on how to create a Monkey Cupcake. I of course, didn't have quite the exact "decorating" flair around the house, so I decided to improvise!
Hopefully they will at least resemble monkeys….bears or dogs, I won't be picky on this one.
Step 1:
Bake your Betty Crocker cake mix according to the package directions. Bake in the oven.
Step 2:
You will need brown and white frosting for the light brown mouth area and dark brown face. This should have been easy, but I had forgotten that I made my leftover white frosting PINK for my daughter's cupcakes! Luckily it worked and lightened up the brown.
Step 3:
Choose what you are going to use for the monkey's ears. I did not have any cookies that were small enough for ears so I decided to use small pretzals. I followed the tip in the Betty Crocker video that said to cut a slit in each side and put some frosting on the tip of the "ear". This will help glue it in place under the cupcake.
Step 4:
Frost the entire cupcake with the dark brown frosting. Now put a blob of the lighter brown towards the bottom and use a butter knife to smooth it out into a circle. (Don't press too hard or you with blur the light brown with the dark brown.)
Step 5:
Gather up some candy, cookies, whatever you have on hand and see what you can use to make the monkey's face. I chose m&m's for the eyes and glued cut raisins on top with a dot of frosting. I used to dots of frosting for the nostrils and a piece of fruit leather for the mouth. Once I got through the first one the rest were a piece of cup….cake!
Thanks for Reading!
Daniele
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