Easter Cupcakes!

Here's what the Easter Bunny made for our Easter celebration! Aren't these adorable?

They are cupcake pops that I made on Good Friday. Some of you may remember that my BFF, the Crockpot Lady, used to post a recipe on her blog every single ding-dong day during 2008. Well, when Jan. 1, 2009 rolled around, for some reason, she thought she should go back to her real life. While she still post recipes every now and then, she's not providing me my instant recipe gratification, so I've begun to wander around the blogosphere a little. Hence, my 2nd BFF, Bakerella. She posts pictures of yummy cupcake pops that she makes, and if you aren't inspired by her pictures, well... I don't know what. Anyway, I figured I'd try to make some of my own.

The picture above looks like little cupcake soldiers, all in a row...excited, I'm sure, at the thought of being eaten. I used red velvet cake. I cooked it according to the box. Then, I crumbled it up and added a whole can of cream cheese frosting. That's right! A whole can! That moistened the cake up...A LOT! Then, I used a melon ball scooper to scoop out the cake and shape into balls. I chilled them overnight because I started way too late at night and was really tired. The next day, I shaped each ball into an oval and pushed one end into a little flower cookie cutter. This caused the other end to sort of mushroom over the cutter, hence... it looked like a cupcake. This was easy to do, but took a long time. The cake mix made 62 of these babies!! Once the cupcakes were shaped, I chilled them again. Then, I melted chocolate and dipped the bottoms of the cakes and added sticks. That's what your seeing in the picture above.

Once I finished the dark chocolate, I melted white chocolate and dipped in the tops. That's what you're seeing in the above picture. Then I used what I had on hand to decorate each one. I used regular m&m's, sprinkles, and sanding sugars. I can honestly say that the red velvet cake was the most awesomely moist cake I've ever had. I guess if you add enough fat, you can make just about anything taste great.

Once again, the kids think I'm a kitchen goddess... They have gone on and on about how yummy they are. And, each one is really only one bite of cake, (Ok, maybe 2 for those of you that would eat it nice and daintily instead of shoving the whole thing in your mouth like me), but they think their getting a "whole dessert" when they have one... This leaves more for me!

I bought a Styrofoam block to push the sticks into so they wouldn't get smashed, but I had no idea one recipe would make so many. I explained my quandary to my Handy Man, who immediately reached out and grabbed a box of Kleenex, grabbed the nearest ink pen, and proceeded to stab holes into the bottom of the box with questionable glee. Problem solved. That's why you see a Kleenex box in the last picture. And, that's just one of them... there's another Kleenex box full of pops, but it isn't in the picture. Happy cupcake Easter to us!