Monkey Cupcakes

I first saw these cupcakes in a Taste of Home magazine I bought a few months ago. I thought they were so darn cute that I could not wait for a chance to make them. Last Saturday night was my monthly scrapbooking meet-up with some friends and I thought these would be the perfect treat to share.

I used this funfetti cupcake recipe (although I left the sprinkles out), because I love the almond flavor and thought it would be great with the chocolate frosting. Since pastel M&M's are not in season I grabbed a bag of Crazy Cores Skittles for the eyeballs. For the ears I bought a regular sized and mini sized bag of Nutter Butter cookies because I could not decide which size/shape I liked better for the ears. It turns out that I think both are super cute and now I have all kinds of cookies left that I have no clue what to do with.

It was fun giving all of the monkeys different faces, some were cross-eyed, some had kissy lips and one even had a beard. These cupcakes were a hit at scrapbooking night, everyone enjoyed them and thought they were really cute. For as cute as these cupcakes are they took pretty much no time to put together. Definitely a crowd pleaser.


Monkey Cupcakes
adapted from Taste of Home

Ingredients
1 package cake mix
1 can chocolate frosting
Vanilla wafers (one per cupcake)
Black and red decorating gel
Pastel blue and/or green milk chocolate candies (2 pcs per cupcake)
Nutter Butter, peanut butter cream filled sandwich cookies (regular or mini size)

Directions
Prepare and bake cake batter according to directions for cupcakes. Cool completely on wire racks. Set aside 1/4 cup frosting. Frost cupcakes with remaining frosting.
With a serrated knife, cut off and discard a fourth from each vanilla wafer. Place a wafer on each cupcake, with the rounded edge of wafer near edge of cupcake, for face. Add dots of black gel for nostrils. With red gel, pipe a mouth on each. Place candies above wafers for eyes; add dots of black gel for pupils. Using reserved frosting and a #16 star tip, pipe hair. Carefully separate sandwich cookies; cut each in half. Position one on each side of cupcakes for ears.