My little great nephew Noah is turning 4 and his mom, my niece Amber, asked if Cort and I would make Muppet cupcakes for his party.  The Muppets turned out to be pretty hard to make so we opted to make him a mini bday cake with Kermit on it (his favorite Muppet) and then cupcakes for Noah’s friends in Muppet colors.  Cort made the mini cake which is a 6″ red velvet topsy turvy cake covered in our buttercream icing and then the blue and green fondants are Duff’s fondant from Michaels and the chocolate log that Kermie is sitting on is the Pettinice chocolate fondant from Funfinity.  Here is a closer pic of that cake:

I was in charge of the cupcakes so I used cookie cutters to cut out the letters, number, stars and presents from various colors of fondant and let them dry overnight (they probably should have dried over two nights as some of them were still a bit sticky when I was putting them on the cupcakes).  I frosted them with our buttercream icing, stuck the shapes into the frosting and then added various colored sprinkles to the tops.  The cupcakes are a new recipe, Chocolate Velvet Cupcakes which I got from http://www.bettycrocker.com.

1 box devil’s food cake mix

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup milk

1/3 cup oil

3 eggs

1 – 2 teaspoons butter flavor or vanilla (I used vanilla)

2 heaping tablespoons unsweetened baking cocoa

1 cup chocolate chips

1  Heat oven to 350 (or 325 if your muffin pans are dark in color).  Place paper baking cups in each of 24 regular size muffin cups.

2  Beat all cupcake ingredients except chocolate chips on medium about 2 minutes, or until well blended.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.

3  Bake 18 – 24 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of cupcake comes out clean.  Cool 10 minutes then remove from pans.