Brinley's 4th birthday is on Saturday and tomorrow is her snack day at daycare. I asked her what kind of cupcakes she wanted for school and was waiting for a response of "Dora" or "Jake and the Neverland Pirates." She surprised me with "Batman!" Ummm, do you even know who Batman is?! I don't think we've ever spoken of, seen or played with Batman in this house. I want my kids to be happy, especially on their birthdays, so I set out to figure out how to make Batman cupcakes.
First I created the bats out of chocolate. I printed a Batman logo that I found on the internet and put the piece of paper on a cookies sheet underneath a piece of wax paper.
Next, I melted chocolate chips in a baggie in the microwave in 30 second intervals until melted and snipped off a very small corner, giving me a pretty fine line to draw with.
I traced the outline of the bat first and then filled it in, dragging the bag a little to spread the chocolate. Then I moved the paper and created another one. I made a few extras, which was good because I broke one when adding to the finished cupcakes. I stuck the whole cookie sheet in the fridge to harden for a little while, and ended up forgetting about it until the next morning, but everything looked good. When I stuck these on the cupcakes, I flipped them over so the flat side was face up.
After baking the cupcakes, it was time to frost! I used to make my own frosting, but no time for that now, so I went with the store bought stuff. Do I really need to tell you that I got the cake mix and frosting on sale and with coupons? ;)
I was really excited to pull out my cake decorating supplies- I don't think I've used piping bags since high school! I discovered the most amazing, easy way to get the frosting in the bags- more on that soon. You put the larger piece down in the bag and snip off the triangle end until you can slide it down to the end. This makes it easy to switch decorating tips later, too.
I used food coloring to make the frosting yellow.
Here's the really fun technique, which I saw on a YouTube video, probably from
Pinterest. Get a piece of plastic wrap and dump the frosting in a pile in the middle.
Wrap up the sides like a hot dog.
Take both ends and spin it towards you around and around , which will create the twisted ends.
Pull one of the twisted ends through your bag. Done! Soooo much easier than trying to scoop it in with a spoon and making a huge mess like I used to! You can probably reuse the piping bag with minimal clean up, too.
Snip off the end and attach your tip.
Just leave the other end hanging out, or tuck it in if it's in the way.
Start on the outside and swirl your way around to the center. I wasn't really worried about it being perfect because I was going to cover it up anyway. That, and a bunch of 4 year-olds are going to dig in and not really care what they look like!
While the frosting was wet, I stuck the chocolate bat on. Ta-da!
