We Figured Out How To Make Dinosaur Cupcakes

We did it! After days of searching for online patterns or samples, or locating a nearby bakery to make them, we came up with our own 3D dinosaur cupcakes for Li'l Boo to take into school to celebrate his summer birthday earlier this week. I kept asking him, are you sure they have to be dinosaur cupcakes? How about dogs or baseball cupcakes? Oh no, they have to be dinosaurs mom. I want dinosaur cupcakes. Gah! (I did find that YouCake has a dinosaur design, but alas they're made in Brooklyn and I didn't have a way to get them over the weekend before Monday.)

So I shared our cupcake decorating books, Hello Cupcake! and What's New Cupcake? with c2cDad asked if he thought we could adapt any of the designs to be dinosaurs. He was up for the challenge. So . . . off we went to A&P and spent way too much time in the cookie, cracker and candy aisles loading up on items that we thought we may be able to use in the dinosaur creations. (In hindsight we bought way too much and have a snack and treat pile to last us a month.)

When we got home, we made cake mix cupcakes in both regular and mini sizes and placed a mini cupcake on top of a regular cupcake, secured by half of a fudgy sugar wafer stick sticking straight up and down. We put a little frosting to secure the two cupcakes together at their seams, and then dipped orange marshmallow "circus" peanuts (we found them at Michael's craft store while we were there looking for fondant and dinosaur molds ;-) ) into frosting and placed it atop the sugar wafer stick. Altogether, this gave the cupcake its dinosaur body/hump, neck and head. We stuck pretzel sticks into the big cupcake - one out the back for a tail, and broke one in half to create two short arms in the front.

We then took a page from the cupcake cookbooks and put the cupcake structures in the freezer for about 10 minutes before frosting in their signature manner. While the cupcakes were cooling and securing into place in the freezer, I made homemade buttercream frosting, tinted it green and then put it into our big glass Pyrex measuring cup to heat slightly into a dippable/drizzly texture. We took the cupcakes out of the freezer and dipped them upside down one by one into the green frosting, letting the frosting drip off before turning them upright. We used red and green confetti sprinkles ( Li'L Boo wanted only red eyes, but I thought they looked too scary and Halloween-y) and dotted them with melted white chocolate (in a Ziploc bag with the tip cut off) to make eyes, then put them on the dinosaurs when they were almost dry.

We then used the melted white chocolate in the ziploc bag to draw on teeth (Li'l Boo insisted they have T-Rex teeth). So there you have it - it took us all weekend to design and test 'em, but we ended up with dinosaur cupcakes for Li'l Boo's birthday celebration at school. Not the most beautiful ones we've ever made, but hey - excellent for two laymen. ;-)

Comments

[NYC Single Mom]

Good Lord, I am so impressed with this and your dedication to following through. I am lucky I can make cupcake frosting from the back of the box.

http://www.nycsinglemom.com

[Hannah]

I am so glad that I stumbled upon this post! I have been racking my brain about how to do excatly what you guys did, adapt one of the recipes from Hello cupcake and make a dinosaur! I am having a dinosaur party for my two boys and they will love these!

[Rode Sarmiento]

I gotta adapt that techniques and keep looking for ideas since I'm in Mexico, so with this photos you help me figure it out how to do it, I also have both books, and this "make me a dinosaur party" is driving me crazy LOL

[Jennifer Neely]

I just wanted to say THANK YOU for your experience and for posting the most wonderful cupcake idea EVER! I made these -- with a few tweaks and they were a HUGE hit at my son's 6th birthday party. I'd like to share a picture and my "tweaks" with anyone else who would read this...

1st. I made mini brownies instead of mini cupcakes - this provided for a more sturdy "body" I also held it all together with a skinny pretzel stick. I used a medicine dropper to make a hole in the circus peanut which was the exact size of the pretzel stick, used icing to make sure the stick stayed inside the peanut and then pushed it through the brownie and in to the cupcake. Freezing for about 15 minutes and then using store bought icing tinted green -- and for the eyes I used mini m&ms

Excellent, they look like you spent a ton on them and you really don't have to have lots of skills to make them!

[c2cmom]

Jennifer - Excellent tweaks! If you can, please link to a photo of yours, or email one to me c2cmom at gmail dot com and I'll include it here and credit you.

I think I need to make these dinosaur cupcakes again and have better photos to show along the process. It warms my heart that people are finding inspiration from our search for dinosaur cupcakes! :-)

[Ann Forster]

These are utterly amazing! Just love them. Cutest cupcakes ever.Would love to try making thses...what type of frosting did you use to secure all the the parts?

[c2cmom]

We used a from scratch buttercream frosting...confectioner's sugar, butter, milk and vanilla.