Radiator Springs in the Palm of Your Hand!

I'm a home nurse for kids and these were for one of my little angel's 9th birthday. It was important to me to make these as fun to eat as possible. At first I was going to use paper Lightning and Mater's on cupcake picks, even though I hate putting things on top of my cupcakes that aren't edible. BUT THEN, the Dessert Goddesses blessed me with graham cracker CARS 2 characters in the supermarket aisle! I used a very interesting icing for this cupcake. I didn't want the standard chocolate buttercream. I wanted something lighter in color and also in texture to even out everything that was going on, on top. It worked out perfectly! Everyone loved them at the party and there wasn't one left over. =]

CARS 2 Cupcakes

For the Red and Blue cupcakes:

Ingredients:

• 1 box WHITE CAKE mix
• water
• oil
• eggs (all as indicated on box)
• red and blue food coloring

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 standard cupcake pans with 18-24 cupcake papers (again, depending on how fluffy you like your cupcakes).
2. Prepare white cake batter as indicated on box.
3. Separate batter evenly into 2 medium bowls.
4. Add red food coloring in one bowl and blue in the other and mix, until desired shade of colors is achieved. Make sure you don't over do it with the food coloring or else they can actually give your cake a weird taste. You shouldn't need more than 10 drops of each color.
5. Put one scoop (or one heaping tablespoon) of each colored batter to each cup in cupcake pan. 
6. Bake 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
7. Allow to cool about 5 minutes on pan and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

For Light and Fluffy Brown Sugar Chocolate Icing:

Adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

Directions
Pour the heavy cream into a medium bowl, and whip with an electric mixer. Add sugar, vanilla and cocoa powder; whip until stiff and spreadable. Refrigerate until needed. 

Other things you need: 

• 1 box of honey graham crackers 
• 1 box vanilla wafers
• green candy melts
• small sheet (12" by 12" should be ok) wax paper
• small candy making bottle
• black fondant
• corn starch
• yellow writing icing
• character graham characters

1. In a large Ziploc bag, put about 1/2 the package of honey grahams and 1/2 the package of vanilla wafers inside, together. Use a rolling pin or meat tenderizer and just go at the bag to make all the crackers and wafers into dust (crumbs). Set aside.
2. Use a ceramic bowl and melt the green candy melts according to the packaging. Carefully pour the melted green chocolate into the candy making bottle. On the sheet of wax paper, make lots of little cacti by squeezing a small amount of the melted green melts and kind of spreading and drawing it into the desired shapes and sizes. Make sure to make the stems a little longer so when you put it into the icing, it will stand up well without sinking too far in that you won't know what it is anymore =] put the wax paper in the fridge until needed to allow the cacti to harden.
3. I used Duff Black Buttercream Fondant (purchased at Michael's in a large bucket). I grabbed small handfuls at a time, and rolled them out on a surface sprinkled with cornstarch with a rolling pin to about 1/8 inch thickness. Cut straight strips (as many as you have cupcakes) about 3/4 inch wide and 3 inches long (long enough to go across the cupcake).

NOW TO PUT IT ALL TOGETHER! 

Make sure to decorate one cupcake at a time!

1. Evenly spread the icing on each cupcake using a butter knife or frosting spreader. It doesn't need to be perfect or pretty =]
2. Lay one of your black fondant strips through the center of the cupcake. Trim any excess fondant hanging too far off the edge.
3. Get little scoops of the cracker and wafer crumbs on the tips of your fingers and gently pat on the frosting on each side of your black fondant road. Dust off any crumbs that get on the fondant with a dry napkin.
4. Use a tiny bit of frosting to cover the bottom edge of the character graham cracker, and stand in the middle of the black fondant road.
5. Use the yellow writing icing to make dotted road lines on the black fondant on each side of the character cracker.
6. Get your cold little cacti out of the fridge and stand in frosting wherever your heart desires on the cupcake.

I know it's tough to imagine some of the directions without pictures, but I never thought I'd be making this blog, so I'll be sure to take lots of pictures of many-step cupcakes such as this one. Again, ANY QUESTIONS are welcomed!