We celebrated a milestone birthday recently in our home. Instead of heading out somewhere, we decided to capitalize on the nice weather, invite a few people over, and have a BBQ at home. Of course no birthday party is quite complete without cake! And what more fitting for a BBQ, than BBQ-themed cupcakes… I came across a photo of the idea from a general ‘cupcake ideas’ google search, and I’m not actually sure who specifically to give credit to for it… Google is great for inspiration though!
For “Slider” Cupcakes you’ll need:
– Chocolate cake (like this one)
– Yellow cake
– Buttercream frosting, 1 part dyed red (think ‘Tomato’), and 1 part dyed yellowy/orange (think “Cheese”)
– Coconut with green food colouring (think “Lettuce”)
– Ziploc bags to use for decorating
Assembling your “Sliders”:
1. Bake chocolate cupcakes according to the recipe. {I would recommend not using a full recipe, unless you are feeding tonnes of people, or you can eat an unhealthy amount of chocolate cupcake yourself before they reach their ‘best before’ date… }. Bake those cupcakes in cupcake wrappers of some sort; the wrapper doesn’t need to be fancy because you’re going to rip it off anyway. I suggest doing it this way, because it looks a bit more realistic. Oh, and only fill the cupcake wrapper about 25% full… and note, that the cooking time should be adjusted because they’re thinner than the average cupcake.
2. Bake yellow cupcakes according to the recipe (I’ll post a good recipe that I’ve used soon). For these, I don’t recommend using cupcake wrappers. Instead, grease your muffin tin well; when you take them out (which isn’t necessarily easy), they look more like hamburger buns. Do what I forgot to, and sprinkle a few sesame seeds on the top BEFORE baking (if you try it afterwards, they don’t stick).
3. Once everything is out of the oven and cooled. Get out your coconut (you don’t need very much per slider). Add a 2-3 drops of green food colouring and mix in with a fork. Voila, “lettuce”.
4. Whip up your buttercream frosting and divide into 2 bowls. Colour one of them tomatoey red with food colouring, and the other cheesy yellow/orange. Spoon those frostings into separate Ziploc bags, and cut a small piece of one corner off- now you’re ready to assemble. Or I suppose, if you’re one of those fancy types, put your frosting into a designated piping bag, and select a somewhat wide tip to use.
5. Now the fun part, slice those yellow cupcakes in half. Pipe some yellow/orange frosting around the bottom you just cut. Place the chocolate cupcake layer. Then pipe the red frosting, sprinkle with green coconut, and top with the other half of your yellow cupcake. Sliders.
