Pandas!

Panda Mini Cupcakes!

I saw Bakerella's neat blog posting about these little babies (Bakerella's Easy Little Pandas) and had to try them!  They were generally pretty easy, although for some of them it was tough to get the little ears to stay in place and the mouth sprinkles sometimes took on a mind of their own.  But still super fun to make and super cute!

First, I made my mini chocolate cupcakes.  My 3 year old was helping with these so we expedited things and just did a boxed Devil's Food cake mix.  I used our awesome pancake pen to squirt a little batter into each cup, which works great!

Into the oven...

...and out of the oven!

Next, I used a little vanilla buttercream frosting (luckily I had some standing by in the fridge leftover from the Yoda cake) with a #12 tip to put a small dollop on the top of each cupcake.

Then I lightly pressed the top of the cupcake into a bowl of white sanding sugar.

Then on go 2 upside down chocolate chips for the ears, two for the eyes and one sideways one for the snout. Use the chocolate jimmies to make whatever kind of mouth you like.

Now for the eyes.  Using an edible ink pen, draw black dots onto white confetti sprinkles for the eyeballs.  (You can get both the pen and the confetti at places like Michael's.)  Then use a little frosting to stick them onto the chocolate chip eyes.

  And voila!

And, of course, one cake mix makes 3-4 dozen mini cupcakes - so when you get tired of making pandas, just top the rest with a little frosting and either jimmies or sugar.

Enjoy!  :)