You Are My Sunshine Cupcakes
Makes 24 cupcakes
Cake Ingredients
1 package yellow cake mix
Orange juice, fresh or bottled
Frosting and Decorating Ingredients
1 container purchased vanilla frosting
Yellow paste food coloring
1 small bag of matchstick-sized pretzel sticks
Assorted small hard candies and M&M’s
Assorted decorating gels and tube decorator frosting
Let’s Bake Cupcakes!
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 24 cupcake pans with paper liners. Set aside until ready to use.
- Prepare cake mix according to package directions, substituting the same amount of orange juice for water.
- Fill each cup evenly 3/4 full of batter. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or according to package directions for cupcakes. Remove from oven and cool in pan 10 minutes on wire racks. Remove cupcakes from pans and cool 15 minutes on wire racks before frosting.
Let’s Make Frosting!
- Place frosting in a medium bowl and add yellow paste food coloring stirring well to blend color. Frost cupcakes.
- To make faces, insert 7 to 9 pretzel sticks going around in a circle on the upper edge of each cupcake above the paper liner. This makes the “rays” of the sunshine. Use candies, decorator gels and frostings for eyes, nose and mouth.
Kids Cooking Shop Kid-friendly Cooking Tips
- Use assorted colors of frostings in addition to the yellow frosting. Instead of using pretzel sticks, use various colors and flavors of Twizzlers® candies cut into assorted lengths for the sunshine rays.
- Delete the “sunshine rays” decoration and have children make the cupcake faces into likenesses of their own faces. Use candies with the same coloring as their eyes and add appropriately -colored frosting hair and decors.
