The Last Minute Cupcake: Cookies

Does dessert get any better than when cupcakes are fused with cookies?! Somehow The Last Minute Cute Cupcake turns into an adorable and delicious surprise! Your cupcake recipients will think you planned it (not just found your ingredients in the depths of your cabinets!).

Whether it is as a beloved Sesame Street character or a tiny Teddy Graham swimming about in a sea of graham cracker crumbs and blue icing, cookies are the gateway to cuteness!!

Love cookies? Like really really love cookies?? How about baking them INTO the cake?! It's actually pretty easy.

Step 1: Make your ordinary white cake
Step 2: Crush several oreos and mix into the cake mix
Step 3: Drop a whole Oreo into the bottom of the muffin cup
Step 4: Pour the white cake mix over the bottom Oreo
Step 5: Bake as directed
Step 6: Get your cupcake and milk on!!

Add some pink frosting a oreos on top and you have a Pink Panda! Cookies are the ultimate accessory to cupcakes!

The Last Minute Cute Cupcake: Food Coloring

In continuation of spontaneous cupcakespiration, today we will explore the fun-filled options of...

Food Coloring

If you have food coloring, you can bake a spontaneous batch of cupcakes that can apply to any occasion! I'm not just talking about through colorful icing swirls.

The awe-factor is easy to achieve, just by adding food coloring to the cake part of the cupcake. You can dye it all one color - like green for St. Patrick's Day (or Christmas!), blue for Hanukkah, or tie-dye for birthdays! Here I made these "Hippie" cupcakes for 4th of July last year.

The trick is to remember that regular eggs will give any light-colored cake a yellow hue - so, for true colors, use an egg white recipe. Also, through trial and error, I realize that the dye adds an extra component to the dry mix that thus needs extra moisture. Just a smidgen bit of extra oil!

Also, it helps if you swirl the various batter colors together. Otherwise, the three colors won't combine to create new colors on their own!

The Last Minute Cute Cupcake

It is holidays like Easter that test the creativity of our cupcake decorating and oftentimes our last nerve! What happens when you remember a co-worker's birthday at the last minute? Or have to whip up a batch of "congratulation on your new fancy shoes" treats? Take a look in your cabinets for some every day items that can turn an ordinary dessert into something special.

In this week's blog series The Last Minute Cute Cupcake, I will demonstrate how you can utilize random ingredients to create cuteness!! Today is...

Coconut

Oh the festive options you have by just using a bit of coconut and your run-of-the-mill food dye! You can whip out your extra chocolate chips for eyes and a jelly bean for a nose (or beak!). Either will make it easy for creating the cutest critters that Easter has seen - just look at these little yellow chickies!

Don't have food dye handy (because you iced a rainbow of delicious treats for Valentine's Day to spell out your love's name in icing?) Not a problem. How about a fuzzy bunny?

The ears could either be marshmallows from your latest smore-fest or gummy fruit slices dipped in the white icing. The eyes could be chocolate chips or M&Ms or even sprinkles! Whiskers could be twizzlers from your last movie night or simply drawn on using the decorative icing tubes - which, incidentally, can also be used to color icing, if your food coloring isn't around.

How about pecans for cute little eyebrows? Oh the possibilities with just a tiny bit of coconut and imagination!