How to Make Mini Cup-Cakes and Mega Cup-Cakes

Hello, everyone! Here is an easy recipe for advanced and beginning bakers alike. Young people can take part as well. Especially with the decorating bit. This is going to be a vanilla pound cake recipe. If you want to make a different flavor or kind of cake, any other cake batter would probably work. And you can use food coloring anywhere you like. Just keep in mind that there would certainly be little differences in the end result.

Supplies

The only non-edible requirement that you may not have readily available, is a large oven-proof bowl to cook the mega cup-cake in. It should have a cup-cake sort of shape, but it doesn't have to be perfect. And of course the mini cupcake/muffin pan

The Ingredients:

For the cake batter:

3 sticks (or 24 Tablespoons) of softened butter

8oz of softened cream cheese

2 1/2 cups of sugar

1/3 cup of sour cream

2 teaspoons of vanilla

6 eggs

3 cups of cake flour

1/2 teaspoon of baking powder

1/8 salt

For the frosting:

2 sticks (or 16 tablespoons) of butter softened

8 oz of shortening

5 cups of powdered sugar

1/2 cup of milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla

For the syrup:

1 package of jello (your choice of flavor, mine is strawberry)

2 cups of boiling water

2 cups of cold water

Step 1: If You Don't Have Cake Flour

If you do have cake flour, you can skip this step. If you don't, then you can either just use the regular kind (all-purpose), or make your own, which is quite simple. All you need to do is: for every cup of flour that you put in, take out two tablespoons, and mix in two tablespoons of corn starch, and that is it.

Step 2: Prepare to Bake

The first thing to do, is preheat the oven to 325° F. Then, you must grease the pans. However you want to that is fine, by buttering them or spraying them with cooking spray.

Step 3: Cream the Butter and Cream Cheese

You can do it by hand or with a hand mixer, but I am using this stand mixer. Make sure to scrape the bowl down if you need to.

Step 4: Add the Sugar, Sour Cream, and Vanilla

Beat until quite smooth.

Step 5: Beat Each of the Eggs In.

This step is pretty straightforward.

Step 6: Mix the Flour, Baking Powder, and Salt Together.

Then carefully fold it by hand into the rest of the batter.

Step 7: Pour Your Batter Into the Pans

Now this where you decide to do a mega cup-cake, lots of mini cup-cakes; or both. Note that you cannot have more than about 8 minis if you want a mega too. You could have an army of mini ones, but no mega. Then again, you could make your mega even bigger by making no minis. It is up to you.

Step 8: Into the Oven They Go

You must be careful not to burn the minis. Mine only took about 10 minutes. The mega will probably take about an hour and a half. You must watch them closely. When they are done, they will be golden brown. They will be firm to the touch, and a fork stuck in them will come out mostly clean, with perhaps a few little crumbs sticking.

Post Script: don't mind the bare top of the mega cup-cake. It was subject to a bit of "testing" ;)

Step 9: Now for the Frosting

This is easy. You just mix in each ingredient one at a time. For the sugar, take it 1 cup at a time. Make sure that you don't leave any lumps. It will be fluffier if you mix it for a good while in a stand mixer.

Step 10: Remove the Cup-cakes From Their Pans

Be very careful. If you're not, you could break them. I know it's tempting to pop them out before they're cool, but that is dangerous. I can tell you from experience, unless you are in some sort of rush, just wait until they're cool.

Step 11: Make the Jello Syrup

Just follow the directions on the back of the box to make a syrup. But do not put it in the refrigerator.

Step 12: Poke Holes in the Mega Cup-cake

Once again, be careful. After that, you pour the syrup over the cake.

Step 13: Decorate!

Whatever strikes your fancy! Anything you like!

I won't give instructions for this step, but I'll leave pictures of my finished product. Also, it is a battle to keep the frosting from going "limp", if you need to put it in the refrigerator or the freezer to cool down, then do that. You can add more sugar too, that will make it a bit stiffer.

Step 14: The End

That's all folks! Thank you for using my tutorial. Have fun making your own version. If you can share pictures in the comments, I'd love to see them. Goodbye!