Mickey & Minnie Mouse Cupcakes

So I decided to make Mickey and Minnie Mouse cupcakes...because I saw it on Pinterest.

The original pin is just a picture in cyberspace found at this link.  The link looks sort of shady...and all you will find there is the exact picture I posted.  Maybe don't click it?

Computer-virus-paranoia be gone.

Ok.  Aren't those cupcakes adorable?  Miss P is a huge fan of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (and the hot dog dance)!  So when I saw these cupcakes, I knew I had to make them for her.  Or with her, as it turned out.

Let's get started. 

This is what you will need:

Cake mix (and everything needed for that), Mini Oreos, Oreos, two sticks of butter, 7-8 cups powdered sugar (2lbs), and some milk. 

Oh and a sweet little pair of hands, eager for an opportunity to help (or sneak frosting).

You could just use tub frosting...but buttercream is tres delicious.  

And I guess the kind of liner you use is up to you, but I really wanted to be authentic Mickey/Minnie Mouse, so I bought red and white polka dot liners.  You can find them here on Amazon for $3.94 with free shipping. There are 50 in a pack and they held their color really well during baking.  

While I mixed the cake, my sous chef lined the cupcake pans...

Look at that little hand!!!  Love.

While the cupcakes were baking, we started working on the buttercream.  I don't strictly follow any particular recipe.  I always start with two sticks of butter and the rest varies each time depending on what the bc looks like in the bowl.  

If you want to make some delicious buttercream, start by cutting up two sticks of butter (I do this with butter straight from the fridge):

Hahahahaha!  Can you tell I had some help here?

Add about 1/3 cup of milk and 1 cup of powdered sugar.  Start the mixer on low.  Then gradually add in more and more powdered sugar and milk (no more than another 1/3 cup of milk) until you reach a smooth but sturdy consistency.  

The buttercream will taste better if you have some sweet little hands directing the stand mixer.  Trust me.

If you are frosting a cake you will want the bc to be more firm, but if you are piping cupcakes it needs to be a little less firm. 

I used almost all of the 2lb bag of sugar.  There is probably about 1 cup left so I that means I used about 7 cups. 

Now that's a lot of sugar!

I don't know about you, but these look perfect to me.  Just cake...

Miss P and I are a perfect team.  She only likes the frosting and I only like the cake.  

Even though I don't care about eating the buttercream, I do love to decorate with it!

I used my favorite Wilton 1M tip.  Pretty swirls of yummy goodness:

So perfect.

This was the point in the project where I wished there had been an actual site linked to the original pin.  Because I had no idea how to make bows for the Minnie cupcakes.  

I just winged it (where did that saying even come from?)...

I thought I would tint some candy melts red and pipe them into the shape of a bow.  

Have you ever worked with candy melts?  They don't like to be tinted.  I think the only reason it worked for me this time is because I used a gel color and not a liquid.  And I only used a very tiny amount.  You can't add liquid to candy melts because it will turn them into a clump of shame. 

Another thing I don't like about candy melts is that they harden back up extremely fast.  Like literally by the time I had transferred them from the bowl I melted them in to the bottle, they were too cool to pipe.  That's why I keep this handy:

That's a mug full of steamy hot water.  

I piped some bows onto a sheet of wax paper and let them dry for about 10 minutes.  

Meanwhile, I assembled the mice.  And I figured out that they play much nicer if you only use one side of the Oreo.  The cookies were a little too bulky for the cupcake when they were whole.

Also, OCD induced tantrums can be avoided if you make sure your 'OREO' imprints are all facing the same way.

Not that I had to redo any...

Hi there, Minnie!  What a lovely bow you have!

You're lonely?

How about a friend?

Don't they look happy together?

You can literally see how fast those sweet hands removed the bow! 

"Nom, nom, nom..."

This project was easy peasy and made my little one super happy.  I only wish I could have done a better job on the bows!  If I did this for a birthday party, I would definitely try to order candy bows from somewhere because piping them out of candy melts was not the way to go.  Overall, a solid B+.  Can you really go wrong with cupcakes?