Frozen Buttercream Transfer Tutorial

Okay, you guys know how I'm not a cake decorator, right? Like, you've been here through all of my rants about how the Cake Boss and similar shows have made people think baker = decorator when most decorators aren't actually great bakers. (I know a lot of cake decorators who use box mix because it's easier, quicker, and they can spend more time decorating. I'm not hating, I'm just saying that you don't have to be both) I know with me, I really don't have the patience for most cake decorating. Occasionally, I'll go a bit manic and decide that I can make royal icing transfers or dalek cupcakes, but even then, I'm aware of my limitations and try to keep things simple.

So when I tell you that that cake up there was super easy to decorate, you'd best believe me.

A frozen buttercream transfer is a cake decorating technique that works pretty much like it sounds. You create the design with buttercream and freeze it to transfer on to the cake. It's similar to the RI transfers I did for my Balance cupcakes, but unlike royal icing, the buttercream will only need 1-2 hours in the freezer to "set," and it won't harden. That means once you put it on the cake, you just need to let it defrost for about 15 minutes, and the buttercream is soft and creamy once more. People will think you're magic when they realize the design is delicious frosting and not edible paper.

Also unlike a RI transfer, if a frozen buttercream transfer cracks or breaks while moving it, it's no big deal. Let the buttercream soften for a minute and then press the cracked pieces back together, smoothing it out gently with your finger or a piece of waxed paper. Mine broke into three pieces when I moved it to the cake. Can you tell where it happened? Cause I sure can't.

Can't draw? No sweat. Coloring pages work perfectly with this technique. You can find all sorts of free coloring pages online (which is what I did), or you can get coloring books for cheap just about anywhere (and if you've got kidlets running around, you can just borrow one of theirs)

Source

This is the image I used, which I got for free on AZ Coloring. If you're just doing a character cake, you can just print it on out and get started. However, since a frozen buttercream transfer is an inverse technique, if you have any writing like I did, or if your image has to face a certain way, you have to flip the image. You can do this in any photo editor, or even in a Word document, which I did (the pan I used was roughly the same size as a piece of printer paper, so that was the quickest way to make sure the image took up most of the page).

If you're using a physical coloring book, you can scan the image in and flip it, or you can trace the image on tracing paper with a sharpie, then just flip the tracing paper over.

Tape your image onto a flat, portable surface (I used a cutting board), tape a piece of waxed paper on top of it, and start outlining. If your outline color is black, you're probably going to want to use a tube of black decorator's icing rather than homemade. True black is hard to get without massive amounts of food coloring and the premade black is less likely to bleed. Most people recommend using Wilton, but I didn't feel like going to Michaels just for a tube of frosting, so I used Cake Mate brand, which is carried in my local supermarket and has special tips you can screw right onto the tube. The tip was a little too big (the smallest they had was a #3), but otherwise it worked out fine.

Once your outline is finished, stick it in the freezer for about 15 minutes to set up. This is not strictly necessary, but it will help prevent bleeding and makes it easier when you fill in the rest of your colors.

While your outline is chilling, you can go ahead and mix up your buttercream. You don't want to use store bought frosting as you need the butter for it to freeze firm, so you'll want to use a recipe that's at least half butter (half shortening). If shortening skeeves you, I see no reason you can't use all butter, it will just need more time to thaw, and it won't take color as well.

I used 1 cup unsalted butter, 1 cup solid white vegetable shortening, 1 tsp. vanilla bean paste, a pinch of salt, and I didn't actually measure the sugar, but it was probably about 4 cups.

Once your outline is set and your buttercream is ready, you can start filling in your colors. I had planned out my colors before hand and I knew I would need a lot of white, so I just went in order of "colors that can be used to make other colors" (leftover pink was used to make purple, yellow made orange made brown). There's probably a better way to do it, but this worked for me. Make sure your buttercream is at room temperature, pipe it in (I didn't use a tip, but you can if you need more control)

Now, I specifically chose this design to cover the whole top of the cake, which is why I needed fill in all that white in the last picture. You don't have to do that. It depends on your design and your preference. I just like to do it this way. If your transfer is not going to take up the whole cake like mine, you'll just need to use your background color (in my case, white) to fill in any gaps (like the holes in the "hoot hoot"). Stick the transfer back in the freezer for another 15 minutes.

The last step, which I forgot to take pictures of, is a layer of more white (or whatever your background color is) over the entire transfer, making sure it's smooth and even. This makes sure you have an even base for the transfer. If you skip it, the frosting might sag once it thaws, and that doesn't look good.

Place it back in the freezer and freeze for a minimum of two hours. Once fully frozen, you can flip it onto your cake, or if you're making it ahead, like I did, wrap it up in a few layers of plastic wrap and keep it in the freezer until you need it. I made mine a week ahead, but as long as it's wrapped tight, I don't see why you couldn't keep it in there for 2 or 3 weeks.

Place it on the cake while still frozen, then let it thaw for about fifteen minutes. The transfer is thick, about half an inch thick, so piping a border around the edge helps it look a little more seamless. Of course, I'd never piped a shell border before in my life, so I'm not sure it actually did much to help. Once the buttercream is thawed, you can cut the cake as usual, and watch all your guests try to figure out how you did it.

R2D2 Brownie Bites

You may or may not remember back when I made the Dalek Cupcakes, I used a brownie pop pan to get the rounded top of the dalek's head. What you don't know, is that I didn't just buy the pan to make daleks. I remember thinking, looking at the pan, that it kind of looked like R2D2. I could just stick some mini kit-kats on the side for the legs, dip it in white chocolate, boom, it's R2.

And I was going to do just that. I even bought a bag of kit-kats to do it, and I never did. I ate the kit-kats and forgot all about it until now. I realized I had nothing planned for Star Wars day, and it hit me that I still had that brownie pop pan that looks like R2D2.

However, the original plans for edible R2 kind of got derailed. It's been raining for the past 3 days here in NJ, and as you can imagine, everything's rather damp. It's for this reason, I think, that my white chocolate refused to behave. Not to be deterred, I decided to use thinned royal icing instead, and while that did the trick (and I kind of prefer it, flavorwise), it wasn't without it's difficulties. It didn't want to stick to the kit-kats (you can still kind of see the chocolate in the picture) and I needed three coats of it to cover the brownies to my satisfaction. Royal icing also needs a lot more time to set set up, so it just took up a lot more time than I had planned for. Maybe I would have been better off with a liquid fondant or something else, but everything ended up working out in the end, so I can't really complain. Still, I recommend using candy melts instead of royal icing.

I was going to share a photo tutorial of how I made them, but there were kind of only three steps. 4 if you count baking the brownies, so it didn't feel necessary

Step 1: bake your brownies in the brownie pop pan. Use your favorite recipe. They only take 15-20 minutes to bake (the sweet spot for mine was 22 minutes, but every oven is different). Cool completely, then chill in the fridge to firm them up a bit. Level them off so they sit flat.

Step 2: attach the kit-kats. Take mini kit-kats, apply a little melted chocolate, and place them on either side of the brownie. Stick in the freezer for a few minutes to set.

Step 3: coat the brownies in melted white chocolate or thinned royal icing. Allow the excess to drip off and place on a waxed paper-covered plate to set. For chocolate, chill in the fridge for about 15 minutes. For royal icing, let dry at room temperature 1-4 hours until firm (may take multiple coats)

Step 4: decorate. I used blue royal icing to mimic R2's design. You can also use decorating icing, or candy melts, whatever you have on hand. I kept it pretty simple, but you can simplify it even more if you want, or go more realistic. R2's very recognizable, so you don't have to be exact.

Oh, I almost forgot about Step 5: nom.

Happy Star Wars Day! May the fourth be with you.

Other Star Wars treats:

BB8 Pizza

Salted Caramel Death Star Popcorn Balls

"Darth" Chocolate Cupcakes with Sith Lord Red Velvet Frosting

The Longest Journey Balance Cupcakes

Hot Chocolate and Chai Tea Cupcakes with Chai Spiced Buttercream

Do you guys know what my favorite video game of all time is? Probably not, because I've never talked about it on the blog (although I have talked about one of its sequels), and I don't think you're psychic. I'm not even sure that you'd be able to guess, as it's pretty old now and a bit on the obscure side.

That game is The Longest Journey. It's one of those old point and click adventure games that used to be all the rage in the 90s where gameplay was focused on puzzle solving rather than killing all the things. In fact, The Longest Journey is best known for one of it's puzzles. All you have to do is mention "the rubber ducky puzzle" and anyone who has played the game will know exactly what you're talking about.

Source

Don't let its cute and innocent appearance fool you. It's an instrument of pure evil

The rubber ducky puzzle is famous for being really ridiculously difficult. I honestly don't know how anyone could solve it without help. It never occurred to me that I had to feed bread to the seagull and fix the water pressure machine in order to open the electrical box across town so I could sneak into the movie theater. (I skipped like 25 steps in that description. I didn't want to spoil all the fun).

Rubber duckies notwithstanding, The Longest Journey amazed me with the most fantastic storytelling, world-building, and character development I've ever seen in a video game. If you don't mind dialogue heavy games (and there is a lot of dialogue) I highly recommend it. Don't let the dated character animations put you off a spectacularly enjoyable game.

Anyway, with the newest installment of The Longest Journey saga, Dreamfall Chapters, almost complete (I don't want it to end, but I also WANT MAH BOOK 5 NOW PLS), I really wanted to make some cupcakes inspired by the franchise. I did consider making rubber ducky cupcakes, but they'd have to be blue and with my food coloring sensitivity, I wasn't about to let the rubber ducky make me sick. He's caused me enough suffering.

The Balance between the parallel worlds of Stark (the world of science. AKA us) and Arcadia (the world of magic. AKA I want to go to there), however, is a consistent theme throughout all three games, and is the driving force behind the events of The Longest Journey (and is in peril again with the dream conspiracy in Dreamfall Chapters), so the Symbol of the Balance is an immediately recognizable representation of the game. When I found some chocolate cookie icing on clearance at the grocery store, I figured I could use that to make some royal icing transfers to decorate with.

Source

Now, I've worked with royal icing twice in my life (and once was just to draw a smiley face on Sherlock Cupcakes), and I've never made royal icing transfers before. However, I have read a lot of cookie decorating blogs (at one point in my life I decided I was going to start decorating cookies. Then I remembered how much I hate roll out dough. But they're still fun to look at), so I figured I knew enough to swing it. And actually, it wasn't that hard. Time consuming? Most definitely. But once it's dry, a royal icing transfer will keep for ages in an airtight container, so it's great for making ahead. The symbol of the balance actually lent itself well to royal icing, as it's mostly made up of fluid lines and not sharp edges. I did have to coax it into place a few times with a toothpick, but from all the cookie decorating blogs I've read, that seems normal.

All you need to do is print out the image you want (in my case, the symbol of the balance), tape it to a cookie sheet or similar flat surface, tape some waxed paper over top. Take your cookie icing in your "outline color" (I used Betty Crocker brand chocolate flavored) and follow the pattern. Let dry for a few hours.

Then I mixed up a small batch of flood consistency white royal icing (I just halved the recipe that comes with the Wilton meringue powder) and fill in all the empty spaces (use a toothpick to get the corners). I ended up doing a reverse image type deal because that was just easier, but either way works. (And if you don't know what "flood consistency" means, check out this post from LilaLoa. I'd try to explain it, but I'd probably just confuse you). Let dry at minimum over night. They take a very long time to dry, and if you try to remove them from the wax paper before they are, they'll be unsalvageable.

Then very carefully and gently remove them from the wax paper. These were thick enough that I had no trouble removing them, but I've seen people remove royal icing transfers using a knife and a sharp corner, so if you're making a delicate design, please refer to someone who actually knows what they're doing.

The Betty Crocker icing worked great (especially since I don't own tiny decorating icing tips, so using the pouch was easier for me) but it did bleed a little into the white. The bleeding itself wasn't that noticeable, but you can seen see in the photos that it makes it look like the chocolate has bloomed, which is not a thing you normally want chocolate to do.

The air bubbles are totally on me, though

There was no food coloring in the icing (I checked the ingredient list), so I didn't expect there to be any bleeding. I'm not sure if I just didn't let it dry long enough before flooding with the white, if it's just a problem with the prepackaged recipe, or if this is the reason it was on clearance. I can't actually seem to find anything about using Betty Crocker cookie icing to make a royal icing transfer, so it might just be that it was never intended for stuff like this and I should have realized that.

So in conclusion: Royal icing transfers are a surprisingly easy, though time consuming, way to make decorations, and you probably shouldn't use the cookie icing you bought on clearance to make them. Moving on...

Cupcakes! It took me a while to figure out exactly what kind of cupcake to make for these, because I wanted something that could represent the Balance flavor wise. I also wanted there to be a visual distinction between the two flavors. I considered doing just vanilla and chocolate, but I wanted it to be two flavors that wouldn't necessarily seem like they went together, so it would be a balanced flavor. Get it?

I also briefly considered making them yam flavored, because that would make Kian happy, but I ultimately decided against it. Mostly because I don't actually like yams.

Source

Kian will never forgive me

I'm not completely sure how I ultimately ended up with chai tea and hot chocolate. It might have had something to do with the fact that it was about 10 degrees out when I made them. (It's 50 degrees out right now. WTF, nature? Pull yourself together) But when you think about it, tea has a reputation of being very cultured and refined, so it could stand for logic (Stark). Hot chocolate is sweet and frivolous, and therefore could stand for chaos (Arcadia). Plus, they're both related, in that they're both hot beverages that you want to drink when it's 10 degrees out and probably add milk to.

Boom. Nailed it.

The cupcake will remember this

So technically, the whole cupcake is tea flavored, because it was easier to steep the tea in the milk than to figure out how to add it after I halved the batter. I started with my very favorite vanilla cupcake recipe, added the tea, and divided the batter in half. To one half, I added a packet of dark hot chocolate mix, and to the other, I added a chai spice mix of cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, allspice, and cloves. The flavors meld together well, but are still distinctive enough that you can taste the difference between the two halves. And what bridges the two halves? Storytime, of course.

Storytime is definitely the prettiest location in Dreamfall Chapers. Although Propast is still my favorite

Just kidding. I wouldn't know how to add a Storytime element to the cupcakes. Gooey dream-filled center? (Because Storytime is the world of dreams and dreams flow between the two worlds bridging the divide.)

Maybe the frosting? But no, the frosting is kind of more like the House of all Worlds. It touches both halves, it's part of the cupcake, but it's still separate from the actual cake part.

Whoa, this is getting deep.

The frosting is just my basic buttercream with some chai spices. I would have loved to do some whipped cream on top of these cupcakes, but I needed something sturdy for the RI transfers, so I went with my old standby. And it's still delicious.

So the moral of the story is that awesome video games deserve awesome cupcakes. And if you're not playing Dreamfall Chapters, you should go do that immediately. Or play The Longest Journey. Or Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (which is the middle game of the series and my least favorite. But still great, storywise). Because if you haven't played any of them, then you haven't earned these awesome cupcakes. Also, it means that you've never met Crow, who is basically just the best ever, and I feel sorry for you.

I kind of want to feed Crow all the cupcakes.

ILU Crow

Hot Chocolate and Chai Tea Cupcakes
Yield: 24 cupcakes

Ingredients
For the Chai Spice Mix:
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. cardamom
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. allspice

For the cupcakes:
2/3 cup milk
3 black tea bags
2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 eggs
8 oz. sour cream

1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 packet dark hot chocolate
1 tbsp.  Chai Spice mix

For the frosting:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup solid white vegetable shortening (Crisco)
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 tbsp. milk
Remaining Chai Spice Mix (2 tsp.)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Pinch salt

Directions
In a small bowl, mix together the Chai Spice Mix ingredients. Set aside. In a small saucepan over low heat, bring the milk to a simmer. Add the tea bags and remove from heat. Allow to steep until the milk has cooled to room temperature. Remove and discard the tea bags.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 muffin tins with 24 cupcake liners. In a medium mixing bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and sale. Set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large mixing bowl with electric beaters, beat the butter and sugar together at medium speed until fluffy. Add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and sour cream, and mix until fully combined. Mix in the milk and then the other half of the flour mixture. Beat until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Divide the batter equally between two bowls. In one bowl, stir in the packet of hot chocolate mix. In the other bowl, stir in 1 tbsp. of chai spice mix. Divide each batter equally between the 24 baking cups. Bake 15-17 minutes, until an inserted toothpick comes our clean. Cool completely on wire racks.

For the frosting: With an electric mixer, beat the butter and shortening on medium speed until smooth. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the powdered sugar. Add the milk, vanilla, and chai spice mix and gradually increase speed to high. Whip on high until smooth and fluffy.

Recipe by Kim

These cupcakes are an essential part of a well Balanced diet.

...

Crow would have appreciated that joke.

Life is Strange Blue Butterfly Cupcakes

Who knows what today is?

Okay, yeah, it's the 20th. Yes, it's also Tuesday. Do you know what else today is?

National Brandied Fruit Day? Interesting. But not the answer I was looking for.

Today is the day they release the final chapter of Life is Strange! You may remember that I've talked about Life is Strange before, when I played the first chapter and was super excited about the rest of the game. Well, today is the day they're releasing the fifth and final chapter and I'm still so super excited about the game, especially since Chapter 4 ended on an epic and horrible cliffhanger (full disclosure: I saw it coming. But apparently I'm an aberration, because a lot of people on the forums claimed it didn't make any sense. I think I'm just really good at anticipating surprise "twists" which is why I'm not a fan of mystery novels).

I was so excited about the Life is Strange finale that I knew I had to celebrate. And how do I celebrate? With cupcakes, obvi.

The blue butterfly is a major thematic element in the game, so I knew immediately they had to be blue butterfly cupcakes. The first time Max, the protagonist of the game, found out she had a unique ability to rewind time, she had just taken a photo of a blue butterfly.

Butterflies also appear throughout the game, usually to give the player hints or to highlight something significant. Really, I had no other option. And since they were going to be blue, I decided to add some frozen raspberries so they would be blue raspberry cupcakes.

These butterfly cupcakes are ridiculously simple to make. Bake some cupcakes, let them cool. Use a paring knife to cut a shallow round from the middle. Fill the hole you just made with whipped cream or frosting (I used a whipped buttercream). Take the middle piece you cut out, chop it in half, and put it on top of the frosting with the rounded edges facing in so they look like butterfly wings. And serve. Seriously, even the most novice of bakers could figure this one out.

I tried doing the chocolate butterfly thing from Hello Cupcake! but then I remembered how much I hate using melted chocolate in a pastry bag, and when I tried to do fancy swirlies with the toothpck like the instructions say, it looked awful. This one has no fancy swirlies, which is probably why it looks halfway decent, so I decided to use it. If you are not toothpick swirly incompetent, the chocolate butterflies are supposedly pretty easy.

If you've played Life is Strange, you know why I have a deer as a photo prop. If you haven't played it, you should go do that, and then the deer will make sense.

(Seriously though, even if you're not much of a gamer, you should play it. Gameplay is simple enough for a non-gamer to pick up, and the game is story driven rather than kill-the-monsters driven. And it's a really good story).

Blue Raspberry Butterfly Cupcakes
Yield: About 24 cupcakes, depending on recipe used

Ingredients
1 recipe vanilla cupcakes
1/4 tsp. raspberry extract
blue food coloring
1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
Whipped cream or your favorite frosting

Directions
Prepare the cake batter according to recipe instructions, adding in the raspberry extract along with the vanilla. Add enough food coloring to reach your desired shade and fold in the raspberries. Bake according to the recipe instructions and cool completely on wire racks.

Use a small, sharp knife to cut out a shallow hole in the middle of the cupcake. Fill the hole with whipped cream or frosting. Take the circle of cake you just cut out and slice it in half. Place the two halves on top of the frosting with the rounded edges facing in, to look like butterfly wings.

Frankenstein's Monster Cupcakes

Do you guys realize that every year I've had this blog, I've done a classic horror movie monster cupcake for Halloween? Last year, I did zombie cupcakes. The year before that, I did vampire fang cupcakes. The year before that, I didn't have a blog.

This year, I knew I wanted to keep that ball rolling, so I asked a friend what monster cupcakes I should make this year. Her answer was immediate: Frankenstein.

But Frankenstein cupcakes had been done to death, and by better decorators than I. Or so I thought. Every Frankenstein cupcake I came across was abso-freakin-lutely stinkin' adorable. Don't get me wrong, I love the cute, but at Halloween, I want something a little more gruesome.

So I sat down to brainstorm. How did I do Frankenstein cupcakes that were a) a little more gruesome, and b) accessible to my general lack of decorating skills?

I went back to the monster's origins. Dead flesh stitched back together and reanimated with the use of lightning and mad science. If the monster was flesh that had been stitched together, I could take green Airheads and "stitch" them together over a cupcake. And the frosting should be red, and I could add some red dessert sauce (I used the syrupy part of cherry pie filling) to make the gaps in the "flesh" look all raw and bloody.

Yes, these are words I used to talk about cupcakes.

I had originally intended to use shoe string licorice to stitch the Airheads together, but I couldn't find any, and I didn't really want to order it online. I ended up using a tube of black gel icing from the grocery store. Cookie icing, or a small batch of royal icing would probably work better, since gel can sometimes run.

The Airheads actually ended up being a little more difficult to deal with than I thought. While they were beautifully pliable after being microwaved for a couple of seconds, they harden back up very quickly. Luckily, I wanted raggedy edges and unevenness, so it ended up working out for me, but that's something to keep in mind. And the cherry pie filling can cause the Airheads to "melt," so either add them right before serving, or skip the pie filling "blood." (You can even skip the gaps in the "skin;" it didn't end up having quite the effect I envisioned)

I also decided to buy a nuts and bolts chocolate mold so I could make the monster's iconic neck bolts. I just melted some Merckens black chocolate wafers with some Merckens super white (Merckens black is really more of a very dark brown-- Wilton's gives you a truer black but Merckens tastes so much better), and dry brushed on some silver luster dust, which made them actually look super realistic. Then I just added a touch of red gel icing around the edge for that added touch of gore. I wanted it to look like the bolts had been jammed right in.

But the decorations don't stop at the top:

I colored the cupcakes green and filled the with more cherry pie filling for added oozey gore when you bite into them.

These cupcakes were a bit time consuming, but easy enough for the novice decorator, I think. Except for the chocolate mold and luster dust, there's not a single thing I used that isn't easy to find, most of which can even be found at the grocery store. The cupcakes can be baked, filled, and frosted ahead of time, too.

Cupcakes: I used my Birthday Cake Cupcakes, but Almond cupcakes would go really well with the cherry pie filling
Frosting: I used the same recipe from my Zombie Cupcakes, just added a little raspberry extract (because I thought it would go with the cherry and the watermelon Airheads) and a little whipping cream.
Filling/Blood sauce: Canned cherry pie filling
Skin: Watermelon Airheads. I liked the color of the watermelon better, but Green Apple would also work
Stitches: Black gel icing (royal icing might work better)
Bolts: Black and super white Merckens wafers, melted and poured into this nuts and bolts chocolate mold, and brushed with silver luster dust

*Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links*

How to Make Monkey Cupcakes

Hey guys! These are the cupcakes that, to my eternal shame, I nearly posted on Star Wars Day. I was just so excited to share this tutorial with you that I almost didn't notice the date.

A few weeks ago, the sister-in-law told me she had signed up to bring monkey cupcakes to a coworker's baby shower. And that by "signed up to bring cupcakes" she actually meant, "signed up to bring cupcakes that she was hoping I would make."

Obviously, I said I would, because YAY CUPCAKES!!! When I asked her if there was a theme, she said it was jungle themed. So I said, "hmm, I might be able to wrangle some monkey cupcakes." And guess what? They were totally easier than I originally thought, so I figured I'd share.

I was inspired by these cupcakes on Persnickety Plates.

Things you will need:
Cupcakes, any flavor (I used my Birthday Cake Cupcakes because they requested vanilla. I just used some cake flour for a more tender crumb, some vanilla bean paste, and added rainbow sprinkles to the batter)
Chocolate Frosting (I used my favorite recipe, but any kind works)
Chocolate sprinkles (one of those tubs they sell with the ice cream works best)
Nilla wafers, 3 per cupcake
Mini marshmallows, 1 per cupcake
1 tube of black gel or writing icing, which can be found in the baking aisle at most grocery stores

Step 1: Frost the cupcakes. I can never frost evenly without a piping bag, so I just snipped off a corner and piped a good blob on top. Obviously, piping is an extra step and not necessary; I just found it easier.

Step 2: Add sprinkles. This is why a big tub of sprinkles comes in handy. If you piped the frosting like I did, you'll want to smooth it out a bit so you get more of a flat top. Then just stick it straight into the tub o' sprinkles, roll it around a bit to get even coverage, give it a small shake to knock off the excess, and now you've got monkey fur.

Step 3: Add the Nilla Wafers. Start with the ears. I usually found a spot that either didn't get enough sprinkles or where the frosting had gotten on to the liner. Basically, take the opportunity to cover up any flaws. Add the ears at a slight angle so you can push them into the cake itself. This way they're nice and sturdy. Add them on either side of the top half of the cupcake.

Take a third Nilla Wafer and add a little bit of frosting to the bottom. Place it in the middle of the bottom half of the cupcake, so it looks like a muzzle. Then take the the black gel icing and add two dots for nostrils and a mouth.

Step 4: Add the eyes. Take a mini marshmallow and cut it in half with scissors. (You may have to reshape them slightly as the scissors will squash them a bit). Place them cut side down (this lets them stick) where you want the eyes to go. Take the black gel icing and pipe a dot on each for pupils.

And that's it. You can have a ton of fun giving each monkey a different expression. Even this non-decorator had no trouble with it. I did this on super-short notice, too, no time to go to Candyland for specialty items. Everything I used came from the grocery store.

These are perfect for a jungle-themed baby shower or birthday party. Or you know, any day of the week.