Angry Birds Cupcakes

My first baking session of the year? 

ANGRY BIRDS CUPCAKES!

Recently I've been watching a show online that airs on Food Network called Cupcake Wars.
Cupcake Wars is one of my many guilty pleasures, and I find myself able to sit the through three episodes at a time, weirdly fascinated by people's creativity/lack of creativity in their cupcake concoctions. I've always had a passion for baking, and when I'm too tired to be revising my Japanese or doing something productive, Cupcake Wars is my haven.

Ralph was sweet enough to suggest that we bake something ourselves. To have our own version of Cupcake Wars (minus the judges, minus the KitchenAid, and minus the ginormous oven that stretches a mile or two.) Thus began the Angry Birds Cupcake showdown, where we make fifteen muffin-sized cupcakes of four red, blue, and yellow birds, accompanied by the three cutest green pigs you've ever seen.

Keeping along with the theme of Cupcake Wars, I stole a recipe from one of the episodes itself.
Using sour cream and canola oil as the "secret ingredient", the batter itself was a smooth and rich texture even without the aid of an electric mixer.

In my years of amateur baking, I've noticed that the majority of recipes online that feature sour cream in their ingredient list do in fact turn out to be a huge success, and an hour later of cupcake preparation, mixing, and baking, these over-sized cupcakes smelled and looked amazing. Also, I upgraded the recommended amount of vanilla essence from two teaspoons to four. I've always been a huge fan of vanilla extract and vanilla bean, and being generous with this particular ingredient has not let me down so far.

We went shopping together for all the ingredients about two days before attempting to make these cupcakes, and bought marshmallows and mini chocolate chips for the eyes/pig teeth, Pocky for the eyebrows (great idea Ralphy), ready made icing for the beaks, stouts, and belly, and food coloring enough to last anyone a lifetime.

Whilst the cupcakes were cooling, I started on the butter cream. I've never physically handled so much butter and sugar in  my life before. Furthermore, I was mixing this batch of butter cream icing with a wooden spoon! The KitchenAid has spoiled me rotten all these years, as I realised how physcially taxing it is to actually whip butter and sugar into creamy, sinful goodness.With the butter cream icing prepared, Ralph and I began dying them red, blue, yellow, and green.

Thanks to the yellow richness of the butter, the yellow bird's color was spot on to begin with. It was challenging to get him the exact right shape since he's a triangular sort of bird, but I'm sure you get the idea we were attempting to create the yellow Angry Bird from the picture above.

The red bird's color was challenging to achieve because we somehow started off pink, but worked our way towards a dark red hue instead. Though we were cautious in adding food coloring to the batch in small amounts, never once did the vibrant red traffic light color appear. Regardless of the slight different shade in color though, the red bird cupcakes were still a success.

The blue Angry Bird was surprisingly the hardest to do, because we struggled to think of ideas for its eyes (note that it has these droopy eyes, and that the there is a pink surrounding it.) Good thing we bought the pink and white marshmallows, because Ralph decided to stack them on top of each other and create what looked like a very accurate depiction of the blue Angry Bird's eye.

I was so pleased that he handled most of the delicate decorations, because knowing me, I would have been boring and used royal icing or fondant for most of the decorations and skimped out on marshmallows or Pocky entirely. Not to mention that using Pocky biscuits, marshmallows, and chocolate chips contributed a lot to the flavour of the cupcake! The green pigs are by far my favourite. Although they're the evil villians of the Angry Birds, I can't help but think they're adorable beyond description.

After a grueling three hour decorating process, all the fifteen cupcakes were finally done. The house smells of vanilla and cake, but no one has complained yet. I wonder how on earth those bakers on the Cupcake Wars program can manage to create 1000 cupcakes in 90 minutes! It took us more than 90 minutes to create a measly 15.

Hope you all enjoyed the photos! Ralph and I took them before consuming a red Angry Bird each. By the time I was halfway through mine, I was harshly reminded of why I never could enjoy eating what I had just baked because I was too aware of its indulgent contents.

All my love always,

April