Look at these tasty little things! Cupcakes that look like mini burgers...mmm sugar-loaded!
I made these on the weekend for my friend's 30th birthday. Being a guy, it's hard to know what to get (or make) as a gift for him, so the last 2 years it's been a food gift. Last year was the bright yellow Super Mario star biscuits/cookies, and this year I did these cupcakes since we were going on a picnic.
Now I'm not claiming the idea is mine, far from it. I saw pics on Flickr and thought, hey that's super cool! So I ran out and bought stuff to make them without looking up a recipe or anything. It's pretty easy, just "involved" in that there's a few different things you need to do. I had a friend ask how it was done, and since I wrote it out for her I thought I would copy/paste here in case anyone was interested in making them for themselves.
BURGER CUPCAKES - A vague "how to"
I bought 2 basic cake mixes, one chocolate and one vanilla. I made them up as the directions said and made the vanilla mix into cupcakes. I used baking paper circles on the bottom of the non-stick muffin trays instead of the cupcake papers (you know what I mean, right?) because the baking paper makes the bottom smooth and the paper cups give it that funny edge when you peel it off.
I made the vanilla cupcakes as the packet said and cooked them. I made the chocolate cake mix as the packet said, but instead of making them into cupcakes I put them in a long shallow pan lined with the paper (lamington pan/brownie tray). I cooked that and when it was done, I took it out and used a small round cookie cutter to make the "meat patties" while it was still warm and flexible. It gets too crumbly when it's cool.
So then I cut the vanilla cupcakes in half with a bread knife and let them cool.
While all the cake was cooling, I took a bowl of shredded coconut (the longer, thicker stuff, not the dessicated stuff) and coloured it with green food dye. I ended up "massaging" the dye into the coconut with some gloves on because it was sitting on the surface of the coconut and not actually going into it. Then when I was happy with the colour of it, I spread it out on some baking paper to dry.
Next I used 1 can of Betty Crocker vanilla frosting and I used about half for each colour of the frosting "sauces". I used a whole buttload of the red food dye for the ketchup, with a drop or two of green to take the pinkish-ness out of it. I just smeared that on the bottom half of the vanilla cupcake, and stuck one of the choco-meat patties on it. I used yellow food dye for the mustard, and I actually had a clean, empty mustard squeeze bottle that I put the mustard-colour frosting into. I traced a circle around the edge of the choc-meat pattie and squeezed some more in the middle just for good coverage, then sprinkled the shredded coconut-lettuce on top. After that I stuck the cupcake top back on, and brushed a little milk on top so I could sprinkle the sesame seeds for the "bun" effect, and actually have them stick.
So that's it. Pretty straight forward, just a lot of steps in it. And it blew everyone's mind at the picnic. My friend's sister apparently wants to marry me now, which is great but my husband might have something to say about that...
