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These grill cupcakes are easy to put together and perfect for your next backyard bbq or Father’s Day celebration!

My inner baker is one ambitious chick. She thinks she’s a master cookie, cake, and cupcake decorator. She can envision all these adorable ideas for decorated sugar cookies, cupcake creations, and beautiful multi-layered cakes. Then actual me goes into the kitchen and gets started and realizes my hands are not nearly as steady or my patience as thick as inner baker me. Sadly. A dozen lightly decorated sugar cookies I did for a friend’s birthday this year took me 3 hours. THREE HOURS!!

I absolutely enjoy creating adorable and delicious creations but I have a new found respect for professional cookie and cake bakers. Y’all have some patience! So when I shut lazy baker me up long enough to attempt a decorated cookie I like to keep it simple like with these beach ball cookies or conversation hearts or royal icing transfers. Simple but cute. Like these cupcakes!

How do you frost the design for these grill cupcakes?

I tried a new frosting technique I saw on YouTube. It’s where you wrap the two different colors of frosting in plastic wrap and add them to your piping bag. This technique makes for a no white look.  Which is  unlike you get when you use just two colors like with these Earth Day cupcakes. I highly recommend having a large piping bag in order to do this technique. If your bag is too small it will be very difficult to get the frosting out evenly without wasting most of one color. Ask me how I know 😉

These cupcakes would be perfect for a backyard bbq or Father’s Day celebration! Use whatever little multicolored candies you like to make your skewers on top of your grill.  I went for Starbursts because they looked kinda like fruit kabobs but you could go with any soft candy that will be easy to skewer on a toothpick.

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Grill Cupcakes

Yield: 12

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Looking for a creative treat for Father’s Day? These whimsical grill cupcakes will be a hit at any Father’s Day party or outdoor summer BBQ!

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Ingredients

For the Cupcakes:

• 2 cups ½ flour
• cup ¾ cocoa powder
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 2 cups sugar
• cup ¾ vegetable oil
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 egg white

For the Frosting:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups ½ powdered sugar
• 1 Tbs vanilla
• in Gel food coloring red and orange

For the Grill Decorations:

• 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips, melted
• Starbursts or other gummy candies
• Toothpicks

Instructions

For the Cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl and set aside.
2. Whisk together vegetable oil, vanilla extract, milk, and egg white until just foamy. Do not over mix!
3. Add dry ingredients into wet and mix until just combined, scraping down sides of the bowl with a spatula.
4. Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners and fill cups ⅔ full.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

For the Frosting:

1. Cream together butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla until smooth.
2. Divide dough in half and color one half red and one half orange.
3. Add each color to a large piece of plastic wrap and wrap tightly. Add both bundles of frosting to a large piping bag fitted with a Wilton tip 1M.
4. Pipe into cupcakes in a flat circle.

For the Grill Decorations:

1. Pipe a circle of chocolate (I made a circle template by tracing the edge of a glass that was about the right size for my cupcakes) onto parchment paper and add cross lines to create a grill.* Allow to set.
2. Cut starbursts in quarters or other gummy candies into small pieces and carefully push each piece onto a toothpick.
3. Once grill grates have set add them to the top of your cupcakes and place candy skewers on top.

Notes

*Make sure your chocolate lines are thick enough to hold shape on top of the cupcake. I found mine were a bit too thin