Disney's Hollywood Studios 25th Anniversary Cupcakes From Scratch!

Back in May, it was Hollywood Studios' 25th Anniversary (that park at Disney World in Florida that used to be called MGM) and the parks had a special cupcake for the occasion.  I believe it is very rare that they share a recipe, but on Disney's official blog, share it they did!  So here it is for you, and if you take it upon yourself to make, this is how it will most likely be!

This is my first recipe using coffee, so Jim & I went to Fairway Market and bought some Italian roast.

If you've never been to a Fairway, you should know they have a great coffee selection--barrels of beans, a nice person stationed there to answer your questions and make suggestions, and a grinder with all sorts of different options (I don't know much about coffee, so Jim helped out with this one.  I'm more of a tea and hot chocolate girl).

We brewed it in a Keurig single cup, and added it to the usual suspects (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder & soda), which was this (before the coffee):

Then we added the coffee and vegetable oil, and stirred it all up:

Then we added the eggs and I had to pick some shell out…

Jim handled mixing duties, and suggested pouring the batter into a spouted container (which I've been recommended to do before, but never tried).  I don't know where any pitchers are in the house, so we used this measuring cup. 

Ummm it ended up being the best idea ever.  Not only was there no stringy-batter mess across both tins, but each cupcake mold was filled quickly and uniformly.  I felt like I could work in a cupcake factory.

There you go, little ones!  See you in 25-30 minutes!

Meanwhile, we worked on the hazelnut-chocolate buttercream icing!

Which was mostly Crisco!  (I've never used Crisco in my baking and was a little hesitant to use it, but at least all the components are "vegetable."  I remember once I was at McDonald's and saw them adding a huge white block of something to the fryer, like a giant rectangle of ice, and that's when I first learned what shortening was, and stayed away from McDonald's for some time after that.)

But this is dessert and you can't care about things like that when you're eating cupcakes.

Fortunately, this was also a huge component:

I'll never understand all the Nutella-haters out there.  The only problem was the claim that it was a "healthy breakfast food."  Obviously it is not, but it's not going to destroy your life.  What if we said butter was a healthy breakfast food?  Well, it's not, but you still spread it on your toast!

So there you go, Crisco and hazelnut spread.  Mmmmm.  Of course there was also butter, vanilla, confectioner's sugar, and a couple spoons of milk.  Mix it all up!

Hey, cupcakes!  How are you doing?

Well they actually formed these coffee-bean shapes right in their centers, which freaked me out a little bit because there were no full or half beans in there.. Just the universe being awesome I guess.  They still needed some time before they were ready to come out.

So Jim loaded up my icing gun, right to the top, and when the cupcakes were ready, we began icing them!

It was really great because loading up the gun is the hardest part for me (besides cleaning it, of course, which I still haven't done).  I was glad to have Jim filling it every time I had emptied it!

Look at all them cupcakes!

This was my first time using this tip (heck if I know what it's called, but it made big, ribbony swirls.. Maybe a "number 5").  It was super easy to make them look awesome and fancy and bake-shop-y!

I felt like a pro!

And about 3-4 icing gun refills later, all the cupcakes were frosted, and there was still a TON of icing left.  We may make a cake just to use this delicious icing.  

The cupcakes themselves were surprisingly heavy--I think the cake part was so dense, but the icing was, too.  It was a wonderful combination of flavors!

In case you're curious, here's what it looks like with a bite or two taken out of it:

Then, just for fun, I google-image-searched the 25th anniversary logo from Hollywood Studios, printed it and cut it out in the shape of the logo they stuck into their cupcakes:

I taped it to a toothpick and put it in just one, and coated it in my own Minnie's Bake Shop Mickey-shaped sprinkles:

Et voila!  Your Park-certified Hollywood Studios 25th Anniversary Cupcake!  Thanks for posting the recipe, Disney Blog!  

futurama returns, and so do my cupcakes!

So, yeah. I haven't made cupcakes in a while. But I've been busy being social! With the return of Futurama, I decided to make themed cupcakes again. Of course Futurama came back the day I left to visit my brother in Japan. Then I was jet-lagged for the next week. After that I don't really have an excuse except I finally got an event to bring these cupcakes to! Allen & Joe, 2 of my coworkers, had their last day working with us today. And Joe & I have discussed Futurama many times at work. So I made these last night.

I used a box cake mix. Whenever I decorate, I don't do "from scratch." Too much time!! So here's how I brought Futurama to culinary life.

By the way, if you're not familiar with these characters, you can catch the show on Comedy Central at 10pm on Thursday nights! Or right now you can do a google image search or something to see pictures of them!

My first attempt was Bender. This didn't go too well.

Hahahaha. Yikes. I got pretty depressed after this one. Then I tried again:


Aaaaaah! This one makes me so happy!!! Here's what happened: (there's a little Monk reference for those of you who used to watch Monk) Bender totally needed a better mouth. I bought a few different colored bags of melting chocolates (white, purple, orange) thinking I'd use them for the eyes and hair (Leela & Fry). But I was sure I was awful at that whole "just melt the chocolates in a ziploc bag and snip the corner to trace any shape at all, easy as 1, 2, 3!" I think it's because the first time I tried it, I followed the directions and microwaved it for what turned out to be way too long so the chocolate melted right through the bag without my knowledge and I got very hot melted chocolate all over my hands. That might have something to do with it.

Well I have gumption if anything, so I tried, tried again. Really all it took was microwaving it for less time. So I made a bunch of oval shapes for Bender's mouth and got that shape up there. Then I took a toothpick and scratched little lines in it for his "teeth." As for the antenna:

Are you familiar with Pocky? The amazing Japanese snack that consists of a thin biscuit dipped in chocolate? For some reason I think the crowd that's into Futurama knows Pocky very well. Anyway, it turns out Pocky is a cupcake-decorator's best friend. Look what can be done!

I dipped part of the Pocky in white icing and rolled it around in silver sprinkles. Then I snapped off half of it and stuck the rest into Bender's head. It worked!!


Then I did Dr. Zoidberg, which was the most satisfyingly simple character to make. Pink icing and pink Good & Plenty's. (Would that be the good part or the plenty part? I think they're both good... But I like how the white ones leave white on my tongue..)


Woop woop woop!

Then I did Nibbler, which is my favorite as far as these cupcakes are concerned.

Vanilla & chocolate frosting, black icing, 2 Necco wafers (I forgot to mention I've been using those as the eyes for everyone. And I thought Necco was a useless candy!), a Pocky, cut pieces of a white melting chocolate (as the fangs) and a white M&M! I got the M&M to stick with--ready??--melting chocolate AS GLUE! Yeah I know it's been done before, but I haven't done it before, and it was really exciting that it worked. See?

I love it!!

Of course I had to make Hypnotoad. Of course!!

I was pretty excited over making this one, and getting the icing to pull into a lip just right.. and using sprinkles as the brown spots--I liked keeping the cupcake element in the design!

So here's what I had so far:

Oh except I'd added Bender's mouth, too. Then it was time for the really tricky ones. Fry & Leela!

Here's my ziploc (oh, I'm sorry, it's actually Hefty!) pastry bag.. and my sketch of Leela's hair, with two of the FIVE Leela hairs I made (I put a lot of chocolate in there, I didn't want to waste it. Plus I thought I'd probably done some of them terribly wrong and I wanted options). I then put the wax sheet on a magazine in the fridge. The next morning my dad asked me if I knew why the Williams-Sonoma catalog was in the fridge. He was afraid my mom had gone crazy.

So here she is, I know, it doesn't do her justice, but I think the continued use of Good & Plenty was quite effective!! If she were blue she'd totally look like Smurfette. Except a cyclops. Cyclops Smurfette.

Here's Fry's hair, followed by the Fry cupcake:

Again, the frosting lip looks great here (sorry!! I don't mean to brag!! I'm just really happy!) which was kind of an accident. Serendipity, we call it. But I had to add the black icing just to make it not look like a fleshy mess:

Thank you, Matt Groening, for making their eyes so perfectly round. M&Ms for the eyes here, and the nose is, once again, a Good & Plenty, rolled in the face icing (ew.. "face icing").

I wanted to make the devil. I really wanted to. And I was all into it and excited until I realized I DIDN'T have Runts or that other candy shaped like tiny bananas that I used on the Monsters, Inc. cake pops that time... So I improvized and used Spree candies, but I had to bite into them to make the horn shape. Therefore I couldn't bring them into work in case someone ate the devil and I had to live with the fact that they ate my half-eaten candies. But I made it anyway, for myself, and here he is:

You can see my bite-marks on his horns. Nice.

Then I HAD to make Morbo, mostly because I have the vinyl figurine of him from those awesome mini figures by Kid Robot. I really want Slurms McGee but alas. I have not found him.

There he is, veins and all. I used purple sprinkles for his mouth because it was pretty late by the time I got around to Morbo and I didn't have purple icing. I went in the "vein" (haha) of Hypnotoad in my "cupcake elements" decoration technique. Morbo himself helped:

Hahahha. Ok. That's the last one! The gang's all here!

Actually, here are ALL of them:


And how I packaged them to bring to work:

I added 6 cupcakes with normal chocolate frosting on them so people wouldn't feel bad eating them (yes, that happens, and it's a really nice compliment!! but I'm also really happy when people eat them!) and so there'd be more than just 12!! Everyone loved them. I was walking on air today. Thanks, friends!! And goodbye & good luck, Joe & Allen!! :)