Hello! It’s been a long time since I last posted up some cupcakes. You know how it is. You lose inspiration, get lazy, and then avoid your blog like the plague. Sorry I’ve been gone so long. I think Shane’s Killer Cupcakes will be much more active this summer.

The idea for these Mickey and Minnie cupcakes has been rattling around in my brain for a good half of a year now, but I wanted to make them special for my sister-in-law so I waited until her birthday to make them. I’m so excited how they turned out.

They aren’t too difficult to make either! I used black candy melts to coat the mini Oreo cookie ears and the tops of the cupcakes. If I were to do this again I’d find a slightly larger cookie. Maybe a Nilla Wafer would work. I think regular Oreos might be too big. I found a cute bow candy mold for Minnie’s bows, and used dots of white chocolate and red candy melts to fill it in.

The cupcakes are made from my mom’s wine cake recipe. It’s usually made into a bundt cake but I chose to use it here because I needed a light cupcake so the cupcake liners were still bright, and the cake tastes like egg nog, which I thought might taste good with the candy melts. The recipe for this cake is below.

This recipe makes 12 Mickey and 12 Minnie cupcakes. Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to put together these super cute cupcakes:

Supplies Needed

• A bag of black and a bag of red candy melts
• Some white chocolate (about an 1/8 cup)
• Bow candy mold
• 48 round cookies somewhere in between the size of a quarter and a half dollar
• 12 cupcake liners in red and 12 in red with white polka dots
• 24 little white paper ovals for Mickey’s pants’ buttons
• 24 cupcakes

Directions

1. I made the cupcakes first so that they could be cooling while I worked on some of the decorations. If you want to try the Wine Cake that I used, the recipe is below.
2. While the cupcakes are cooling, start your work on the candy bows and candy covered cookies. For the bows clean your 
   candy mold and dry it well. Water does not mix well with the melted candy. Melt some white chocolate in a ziplock bag in 30 second increments. Once it is soft enough to squeeze out, cut a tiny bit off of the corner of the bag and pipe out tiny little dots into the candy mold. Once you are done, put the candy mold in the freezer to let the white chocolate harden. While the mold is in the freezer, melt some red candy melts the same way as you did the white chocolate in a ziplock bag. You will need probably no more than half the bag of red candy melts. When you are done melting the red candy, pull the mold out of the freezer and pipe the red candy into the mold on top of the white chocolate dots. Make sure to get the red candy into the little crevices well. As before, freeze the mold when you’re done piping the red candy. They should pop out of the mold easily once they are hardened.
3. For the ears, melt some of the black candy in a small bowl. Add a little canola oil if you want the consistency to be thinner. Dunk the cookies in the candy, fish them out with a fork, and place them on a cookie tray lined with wax paper. This process goes rather quickly. I was a little disappointed that the black candy melts were more like a dark grey than actual black. Chill these in the fridge or freezer as well.
4. When the cupcakes are cool, melt about the rest of the black candy (I stirred in about 1-1/2 tablespoons of canola oil to it to make it thinner) and dip the tops of the cupcakes in it. If you can’t get the melted candy all the way to the edges, take a knife, dip it in the candy, and spread it on. While the candy is still wet, shove two ears into the top of the cupcake. If you’re making a Minnie one, put a bow on top too.
5. To finish off the Mickey cupcakes, glue two little white buttons to the front of each cupcake liner.