These fun and easy minion cupcakes are sure to be a hit with any little despicable me fan!
Today I'm sharing something a little different for me - my first attempt at minion cupcakes!
As I mentioned in a blog post earlier this week, Small Child turned 6 recently. One of the things I will never forget from my own childhood was the awesome birthday cakes that my Mum made us every year for our birthdays. I used to love poring over her cake decorating cook books, choosing which cake I wanted for my next birthday, however far away it might be!
We were given free reign to choose whatever cake we liked, and she always rose to the challenge with an absolutely brilliant cake, every year without fail. Whilst I don't have her amazing cake decorating skills, I am determined to do my best to carry on the tradition with my own children, and I hope that what I lack in skills I make up for in enthusiasm!
Having said that, I'm very proud of this year's efforts - definitely my best cakes yet! Since I made minion sandwiches for Small Child and a friend of his, Small Child was desperate to see what all the fuss was about, so we finally watched Despicable Me (and a week or so later Despicable Me 2), and Small Child's obsession with minions began.
He originally asked for a cat cake, "one that looks like a real cat please Mummy", so you can imagine how relieved I was when he changed his mind and asked for an army of minions instead! Minions I can do, realistic looking cats, not so much!
I made the cupcakes from scratch using a basic sponge recipe, but replacing the standard sugar with soft brown sugar, if only because that's all I had in the cupboard! I cheated with the fondant icing and brought it ready made - 1 small block of yellow icing
To decorate them, I rolled out some of the white icing and used two sizes of circle shaped mini bento cutters to make rings. I laid them all out on greaseproof paper, then sprayed them with edible silver icing spray. Unfortunately the colour didn't come out at all as I was expecting - they were sparkly but still pretty much white, even after several coats of spray, so I decided to colour some of the icing grey (I used black gel colouring for this) then start the process all over again, cutting rings from the icing as I had before. I sprayed the grey version just once, and they came out perfectly this time, sparkly and definitely silver!
While the silver rings were drying, I used the larger of the two circle cutters to cut the same number of circles from some more of the white icing, and laid them out on greaseproof paper to dry out a little.
Once the silver rings had dried, I brushed each white circle with a little water, then carefully lifted the silver rings and placed them over the white circles to make the eyes. Some of them looked more than a bit wonky, but I could live with that at 11pm!
Whilst the 'eyes' were drying, I got on with covering the cupcakes with the yellow fondant. I had to turn to Twitter at this point, because I wasn't sure of the best way to 'glue' the fondant icing to the cakes. Most people recommended butter cream, so I made up a small batch and spread it over the top of each cupcake, before topping with a circle of yellow fondant, which I had cut out with a circle cutter that matched the size of the cakes. This worked brilliantly - the buttercream helped smooth out all the lumps and bumps in the cakes leaving a fairly smooth surface on top.
I then coloured the rest of the white fondant black, again using gel food colouring, rolled it out and cut strips from it which I attached to each cupcake with a brush of water. I topped each cupcake with either one or two eyes, then finished the eyes off with tiny black circles cut from the spare black icing with another mini bento cutter.
I finished off the minion faces with an edible marker pen
Small Child was absolutely over the moon with his minion cupcakes - it would seem that they were the icing on the cake of "the best birthday EVER!"
If you enjoyed this fun cupcake tutorial, you might also like these fun Character cupcake recipes that I've made since:
For more fun party food ideas and recipes that kids will love, check out the Party Food Recipes section here on the Eats Amazing blog or pop over and follow my Party Food for Kids Pinterest board for recipe inspiration all the year around!
Grace
Cristi Messersmith says
Your minions are sooo cute! I linked up my minion bento 🙂
Grace says
Thank you, your minion bento is awesome, thank you for linking up!
Liz Burton says
These are so fabulous! What perfect birthday cakes. Bet they tasted yummy too!
I've linked up my easy Easter Cake Pop treats
Grace says
Thank you! I LOVE your Easter Cake Pops, we're making them today!
Michelle says
I adore these, I'm definitely going to try these! Thank you for sharing x
Grace says
Thank you!
Ariani says
Gorgeous minions! Love all of their face expressions 🙂
btw, your small child just exactly like my youngest son..he asked minion theme for his birthday..so I linked up my minion birthday cake...thanks!
Grace says
Thank you! Your minion cake is absolutely amazing, I'm in awe of your homemade minions!
Amy Masterson says
These minion cupcakes are adorable! Love them!
Grace says
Thanks Amy! 🙂
Gianna says
They are too cute!
Grace says
Thank you so much!
Katrina jones says
Thank you so much. I followed these instructions to make what we're described by my 7 year old as awesome birthday cakes.
Elizabeth says
Followed your instructions, and made perfect minions for my daughters 6th birthday, Thank you!
Grace says
That's brilliant to hear, thank you for stopping by and letting me know, I hope she had a wonderful birthday!
Vinita says
I love your minion cakes. My daughter is a big fan. I'm going to show her the cupcakes and I'm pretty sure I'll be making them come January 🙂 Thanks for the post.
Grace says
Thank you! They are a lot of fun to make and I actually found it easier to make lots of little ones than one big one!
Litay says
Very nice Job ! and (looks) so easy to make.
I made a link of your article to my blog related to the minions world (www.planetminion.com), I hope you are ok with that
Cheers
Melissa says
I have a friend who's obsessed with minions, and I had the majority of the items I needed to make these. Thank to your pics, I made a bunch of minions for her birthday, and she loved it. Thanks so much for the steps and the pics! Couldn't have done it without you!
Grace says
Thank you so much for coming back and letting me know that you made these, I'm so pleased you enjoyed them, what a lovely friend you are too! 🙂
Jennifer @ The Jenny Evolution says
What fun! I'm having a total minion crush right now 🙂
Jennifer @ The Jenny Evolution
Grace says
Thank you! I have some minion obsessed boys on my hands again since seeing the new movie!
HonestMum says
Ah-mazing, thinking of a Despicable Me party for my youngest and these would be perfect.
Grace says
Thank you! They were really easy to make, I don't really do cakes very well so it had to be easy!