Hamburger cupcakes – it’s not what it sounds like. But it is at the same time. A few years ago I saw a burger cupcake and fell in love with the idea. Having not made them in about a year, I decided to create for Cupcake Camp Boston.
These are ridiculously easy to recreate. Seriously. Here’s what you’ll need –
Chocolate Cake
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 3/4 cup cocoa
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 tsp of baking powder
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 cup warm water
- 3/4 cup buttermilk or sour milk
- 3 tbsp oil (canola is fine)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder. Mix in sugar and salt. Mix in eggs, water, milk, oil and extract until smooth. Distribute evenly into linked cupcake tins and bake for 20 minutes.
One thing to note, you will be cutting the tops of the cupcakes off. While it may be tempting NOT to use liners, I can tell you from experience that for some reason, these cupcakes just don’t cook up as nicely (lack of lip and lack of line to cut across). It is possible, but your burger patties may be lopsided.
While those are baking/cooling…
Vanilla Cake
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 cups sugar
- 4 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1 cup milk
- 2 tbsp butter
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In your mixing bowl, combine sugar, eggs and vanilla. Heat your milk and butter together (microwave or stove) until the butter is melted. Alternately add flour and milk and mix in until smooth. This is a runny cake better. Spray your tins with Pam (we’re not lining these ones) and use an ice cream scoop to fill with batter (about 2/3 of the way). Bake at 350 for 20 – 25 minutes.
Before proceeding, everything should be room temperature. You will have very melty and sad looking burgers otherwise. You can take this time to make some frosting.
- 4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 2/3 cup butter, softened
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 – 4 tbsp milk
- Red, yellow and green dye
Beat the butter and vanilla together. Add sugar about a cup at a time and milk to thin out. Beat until right consistency (you’ll be putting this in a piping bag). Divide into three batches and dye each red, yellow and green. I add a little red to the yellow bowl to make it more orange and cheese like.
After everything is cooled and ready to go, cup the tops off of your chocolate cupcakes.
Cup the Vanilla cupcake in half. I sadly don’t have any more assembly pictures (got way into the decorating part!). Fill a piping bag with green frosting and pipe on a swirly oozy pattern on the top of the bottom half of the vanilla cupcake. Stick the chocolate patty on top. Fill piping bags with yellow and red frosting. Pipe on a swirly mess of yellow and red and stick the top of the cupcake on. Repeat until finished.
I used my extra cupcakes (I only made 12 burgers) to help out my dear friend who just didn’t have time to pull off her own batch of goodness. Ironically these were the cupcakes The Boston Globe chose to feature. Same recipes, with frosting dyed blue and sugar crystals! At least this year they didn’t say “and the brownie cupcake with the peppermint patty inside was too sugary on my teeth.” Of course it’s sugary…. ITS CANDY COOKED IN A CUPCAKE! Anyway…
Chompzone 