Cupsatawny Cakes

Happy Groundhog Day!! I heard Punxatawny Phil saw his shadow, which means 6 more weeks of winter! I read today that it has to do with Europeans who settled in Philadelphia and their custom of watching animals come out of hibernation... but I don't know how the seeing its shadow thing makes sense... Anyway, I thought I'd celebrate by making these groundhog cupcakes!!


I started with some chocolate munchkins from Dunkin Donuts, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary (I saw the cups and one of the little logos is Mister Donut--David recently told me that DD used to consist of DD and Mister Donut, but all the MDs changed to just DDs, and MD is now the DD of Japan!) I went to a Mister Donut when I visited David in Japan and they had the most wonderful macarons...

Anyway, I made my usual stop at Fuzziwig's for inspiration. My best find was "popsicle tarts," twin popsicles in tiny candy form! They came in blue (raspberry), yellow (banana! mmm), and white (coconut). The white ones were perfect for groundhoggy buck teeth.


I also got chocolate-covered sunflower seeds (for eyes and noses) and a tube of M&M minis (for ears). Teddy Grahams were also a big part!

I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes and a batch of tiny ones too:

and iced them with white fluffy frosting. I started decorating the small ones by rolling the edges in green sugar:

Then I took the top off a normal-sized cupcake to use the moist inside as dirt. I put that in the middle and stuck a teddy graham in:

I used a toothpick to dot 2 little teeth on his mouth :)

I then did the same thing to the normal-sized ones, but I used the munchkins as groundhogs instead!


The teeth work so well! The thing is, the flavor of the popsicle candy itself is kind of not great... but I told people to take them out before eating the munchkin anyway to avoid a choking situation... It's difficult to stick all the sunflower seeds and m&ms in there without the munchkin crumbling! The fresher the better. It also helps to have a little carton of 30 munchkins when you only need about 5!!

Haha. It's kind of like a Caddyshack cupcake, too.

As usual, I got tired of decorating so I made some "filler" cupcakes: to represent the grassy field the groundhogs are popping out of as they come out of hibernation, I rolled the entire tops of the iced cupcakes in green sugar. Hooray for shortcuts!

Hope your groundhog did not see his shadow! Have fun waking up to "I Got You, Babe" every morning until you figure out the secret to a happy life!