Easter Bunny Cupcakes

While the Easter Bunny isn't the most significant part of our Easter celebration, he is still cute little symbol at Springtime.While I still contemplate how to make a cupcake to reflect my faith, I had this sweet little bunny idea in my head. I honestly don't know if I saw it on Pinterest, or if it was just totally one of those things I envisioned.

I started out my cupcake with a cake mix. I wanted to doctor it up a bit, to put my own stamp on it.

My starting point--Picking a cake mix

To put my stamp on it, I chose to replace the eggs with banana. The ratio is supposed to be one banana per egg.

I mashed these with my hand mixer.

I left the oil the same as what was on the box, but I replaced the water with a strawberry-banana nectar.

This is the brand our store carries, but other brands exist.

After it was blended well, I placed them in my prepared cupcake pans (I have tried the others and I think the Reynolds Stay Brite baking cup is just the best). I normally do not get 24 cupcakes out of a mix. . . it is closer to 18. This time, I did get 21.

Now if this recipe looks familiar, I have blogged about it before here. I just used this one, because I had everything on hand and needed to use my bananas. Depending on what my goal is with the cupcake depends on if I use a cake mix or make it from scratch. If it is "cuteness" I am after, a lot of times I will start with a cake mix. It will just save a lot of steps since for that particular cupcake, I will be spending the majority of my time on the decorating.

I made my traditional buttercream which is 1 stick butter, 1/2 cup shortening, approx 4 cups of powdered sugar (I sift it first and it makes it so much better), 2 TBSP milk and 1 TSP vanilla. I tinted my icing green to give it the grassy effect. I probably could have made it a deeper green, but if too much of the coloring goes in, sometimes, it affects the taste of the icing.

My first step after making the icing was to place it in my "piping" bag with a #233 tip. When using a tip such as this one, you really need to make sure you have no lumps in your icing. This is another fabulous benefit of taking the 30 extra seconds to sift your powdered sugar. If you don't have this tip, you can also use the star tip and do the same type of thing.

See how it looks kind of stringy and grass-like

If you have ever made one of those cakes that are filled with the "stars" all over. . . you will know exactly what to do next. You take this tip and just dab all over, pulling out a little to give it the grassy effect. If you have never made one this way. . . that's ok. You can still do this too. You seriously just plop the icing all over the place. Because it is supposed to look grassy, you could even just make a big circle all over the cupcake. I am sure after one or two times of doing a cupcake, you would get the hang of it. If you mess up, you could always peel it off the cupcake and try again. You might practice on some waxed paper or parchment paper before you go to the cupcake.

You can tell that this is just squiggles. This tip is fabulous.

After that I thought it needed some cute little Easter Eggs.

My Easter Egg option.

I just placed these right on top of the cupcake. I only used 3 on each one, because I wanted to put the peep on top.

My "Easter Eggs"

This would actually make a really cute cupcake on its own, but I needed to add the peep. You can also take a little more of your icing and cover your "eggs" with them. . . to make them look a little more hidden.

Still a cute cupcake, even without the peep.

These were a cute yet simple cupcake. The batter for this cupcake is moist. I am sure they would keep, refrigerated, for a couple of days. They just normally don't stay around longer than 24 hours. With the added cuteness of the season, these were gone in an instant.