My grand plans for cooking over the weekend (in general, and for today’s post) were thwarted by some vicious super-virus that has had me knocked flat on my back all weekend. My husband was a trooper and has been nursing me back to health, while keeping the house clean, the kiddos out of my bed, and even cooking a fabulous Easter dinner for our company while I stayed quarantined. I didn’t even realize the date until Kate mentioned April Fool’s, so I thought I’d re-share this popular post. Even with short notice, if you do what I do below and grab some unfrosted cupcakes from your local grocery store bakery, these are easy enough to pull off last minute. Happy April, everyone!
While I often find myself watching re-runs of Punk’d during my afternoon workouts (seriously, I have a million channels- why is there nothing on at 2pm??) and giggling while some celebrity has an epic meltdown watching their priceless custom made Bentley being destroyed, I’m actually not a huge fan of pranks in my own life. So you won’t find me planning any elaborate jokes on April 1st. Since my kids are young (6, 3, and 1 1/2) we find it more fun to make April Fools a day of full-fledged silliness. A day to be goofy, a day to be random, and a day to do things out of the ordinary. These silly cupcakes are right up our ally. I saw all of the ideas in the fun book Hello Cupcake.
First, a little trick. Not as in April Fools trick, but as in sneaky-time-saving-I-don’t-want-to-bake-or-do-dishes-right-now trick. I’ve told you before, but I’ll remind you again! Sometimes I care about having perfectly wonderful homemade cupcakes. Other times it doesn’t matter so much. And while I want them to taste good, I’m really wanting something quick and easy. Easier than even making a box mix myself. That’s when I head to the grocery store bakery and ask for un-frosted, plain cupcakes. They always look perfect, they’re uniform size, and they actually taste pretty good too.
They won’t usually have them out for sale, but I’ve found at just about every bakery (sometimes you need to find the bakery manager) they’re more than happy to grab some for you and put a price-tag on them. I actually keep these in my freezer for when I need to do blog posts like this!
First up- Spaghetti and Meatballs! While you can obviously tell these are cupcakes,when you plate a whole bunch of them together on a platter they really do look like spaghetti!
You just need a small round tip on your piping bag (or simply a large zip-lock with the end cut off) and honestly just by squeezing and holding the bag in one spot, the noodles form by themselves that way. I just held the tip above the cupcake and moved the cupcake around with my hand until the top was covered. It only took a few seconds. I honestly though it was so cool I wanted to video it. Who knew you could make perfect noodles that way?
And those meatballs? One of my favorite treats- Ferrero Rocher (find them in the candy isle at the grocery store).
Mmmm just dunk them in a little berry jam. Warm up the jam and use a whisk to get is smooth and you can always add a little hot water if you need it for consistency. The “Parmesan” on top is just some white chocolate grated with a cheese grater. I actually used a piece of almond bark since I had some in my pantry.
Next up- Peas and Carrots. Honestly, I didn’t expect these next ones to look so real. They totally fooled my kids! The foil cupcake pan definitely helps. For the peas just use green Runts, and the carrots are orange Starburst, chopped in quarters. Green frosting underneath makes it so the cupcake doesn’t show through.
And the Mashed Potatoes! I think these were my favorite out of all of them. Use vanilla frosting and leave a little bit of a well at the top. Add a drizzle of caramel syrup and a flattened out Starburst (Laffy Taffy also works great) and you’re set. My kiddos thought these were hilarious.
I included these Popcorn Cupcakes just because I think they’re super cute 🙂 They’d be really fun for a movie night/party – even in mini cupcake size.
I used the pale yellow marshmallows from the fruit flavored bag, but white would work great too. You can see below how easy it is to make the kernels. Just snip a few marshmallows into 3 pieces and then “glue” a regular marshmallow on top.
Lastly- this has summer BBQ party written all over it! Frost 3 cupcakes with pale yellow frosting and use Jelly Bellies for the corn. You could use a few shades of yellow and white, but works best is the buttered popcorn flavor. I realize that 98% of the world detests that flavor, but it happens to be my favorite. Take that, haters! Top it with a Laffy Taffy or Starburst pat of butter (or um, real butter if your children eat all of the yellow starburst you tell them specifically to leave on the counter where you set them…) and black and clear sugar sprinkles for the salt and pepper.
Hope that gives you some silly ideas to play around with on April Fools! Do any of you have any fun traditions?? I think this year I’m going to do a goofy dinner game where we eat funny food with random utensils or something. Do share if you have fun ideas!
Questions & Reviews
The titles of the recipe are not showing up when I look at your blog…any ideas why? Also, once found a candy like pizza. I used a tortilla, jam for sauce, melted white chocolate for the cheese and black licorice for olives. It wasn’t very good:)
Amanda- everything looks fine to me so I’m guessing it’s just a glitch with your browser.
I LOVE ‘buttered popcorn’ Jelly Bellies™, and I love the idea of silly cupcakes, including the peas ‘n carrots. What a wonderful treat and prank at the same time. You guys are awesome!
Love these. I had a friend that made a kitty litter cake with tootsie roll poops…thanks for the clever ideas.
PS., I love the butter popcorn Jelly Belly’s too!
I love this idea! Not only will the kids enjoy Friday’s “dessert”, but I think I will bring some into work 🙂 Thanks for the inspiration…I was wondering what to do this year!
The best April Fool’s food prank we’ve ever pulled was a couple years ago … we made a meatloaf (I know how the Our Best Bites girls feel about meatloaf – but bear with me!) in a round cake pan and covered it with mashed potato frosting (mashed potatoes dyed pink!) The potatoes have to be very smooth to pull it off, but it really looked like cake! My kids loved “fooling” Daddy! 🙂 Your peas and carrots cupcakes could be a perfect dessert course!
Hi there! I was just wondering what kind of frosting you used on the spaghetti and meatballs cupcakes? Such a cute idea, hoping to do this on Friday.
Amy
Any buttercream will work- honestly for these I just used a can of store-bought stuff! Normally I don’t use canned frosting because I don’t like the taste- but since these were for my kids who don’t care, it was easy!
I love these ideas!!!
I love, love, love the corn on the cob. I was actually eating Jelly Belly mixed beans when I was reading this and was thinking that if the popcorn flavor isn’t your thing (why WOULDN’T it be?) you could use the white coconut and yellow pina colada flavored beans (I know you suggested the colors, but I thought it was cool that these two flavors specifically would look and taste good together) and you could make a pinapple, coconut or pina colada flavored cupcake. Not only would it LOOK good…it woudl taste YUMMY! Or…wait! You could make corn muffins with the buttered popcorn jelly beans! The possibilities are endless….
We always eat with random utensils on random things like cookie sheets or pie tins. I always make mini meatloaves in cucake wrappers. I make mashed potatoes and pipe them on like frosting. I then sprinkle carrots that are chopped to look like sprinkles. My kids love it. The first year I made this, they thought we were really eating cupacakes for dinner.
This is a wonderful idea! I am trying to come up with something fun as April Fool’s day is a sad day in our family… our “puppy” of almost 9 years was killed when he was hit by a car last year on April 1st. Thanks for the great idea!
The spaghetti cupcakes me made laugh out loud! These are adorable. Hadn’t even thought about April Fools Day coming up:)
Buttered popcorn is my favorite jelly belly flavor as well! This was a fun post. I have that cookbook and made these last year for April Fool’s Day. The only problem was nobody wanted to eat them because they were so cute!
Yum yum yum
delicioso!
For the record porcorn flavored jelly beans are awesome, especially mixed with the blueberry ones. It’s like a hand full of blueberry muffin. The spaghetti and meatball cupcakes look like a great trick, better than what I’ve always wanted to do, which is making meatloaf into a round cake pan and frosting it with mashed potatos, maybe do some piping with some colored ketchup and trying to pass it off as a real cake. I love holiday fun!
Buttered Popcorn Jellybeans are also my all time fav flavor! People often look at me in disgust when I tell them that I’m eating these. They just don’t know. ;p
This is such a fun idea!! We’ll have to make sure we incorporate it for April Fool’s this year! One of our favorite things to do is a mystery dinner, where everyone is given a menu first, where all the food choices and utinsels are mixed up and put into a riddle. Everyone has to make a guess at what each item is and the order they want things to come in. It’s hilarious when someone gets their dessert first, without any utinsels to eat it with. Some don’t even get their utinsels until the very end!! This has become one of our favorite family traditions! Thanks for such a fun, uplifting food blog! 🙂
You’ve outdone yourself this time. So fun but I think my favorite is the mashed potatoes.
The peas and carrots cupcakes are to die for! So creative.
What great ideas! My kids will be so surprised! I’m with you–I LOVE buttered popcorn jelly bellies!
Thank you for your wonderful creative ideas. so cute!
These cupcakes are so adorable and “butter-popcorn” is my favorite Jelly Belly too!!
Awesome idea, I am going to do this for my kids! I’m so excited. Thanks for linking up the book! Looks like there are a ton of fun things in there 😉
oh the butter popcorn flavor is my favorite as well!! wish they were easier to buy here in the Netherlands!
thank you for showing us these from that gr8 cupcake book, if you you hadn’t had showed them I wouldn’t have known it!!
keep going girl!!
Alie
I love these so much!! They look so real! Great Job and great ideas! Thank you so much for sharing. I’m actually going to feature these ideas on my blog this week. 🙂
yaaay
lovely
Buttered Popcorn is my favorite flavor of Jelly Belly beans, too!
These look like a lot of fun!
This all looks like so much fun! My kids are older, but I’m thinking I might still do the meatloaf & mashed potatoes to look like cupcakes for dinner and then the dinner for dessert cupcakes. I wanted to experiment with some cupcake flavors anyways this weekend, so it will give me a chance to use them in a fun way!
My daughter and I won a family bakeoff by making a spaghetti and meatballs cake! Baked a cake in a bowl, turned out on a platter, crumb coated it, squiggled the frosting pasta, made meatballs with chunky peanut butter and chocolate, strawberry jam “sauce”, and then grated white chocolate all over it for parmesean cheese! Just like these cupcakes, but on a grand scale! I love the peas and carrots. My granddaughter hates veggies. These are SO going to be for her birthday.
These are SO fun! We’re having a scrap night this friday and we’re supposed to bring something tricky for a snack… I will most certainly be making some of these!!! Thanks for the idea!