Dump Truck Cupcakes

When I make a birthday cake for one of my kids, I like to incorporate a theme they really enjoy.  I deliberate their interests in search of the perfect theme.

Dinosaurs?

Jungle animals?

A unicorn?

Elsa?  (Read more about the Elsa cake I made HERE.)

It gets my creative blood pumping just to name a few and ponder the possibilities.

When I considered Mr. Smiles’ interests, I hovered over building blocks, dinosaurs, and books before finally settling on trucks.  He loves to drive toy cars and trucks.  And may I say, he’s an excellent driver.

I love watching him push his toy truck down the hallway, completely bent over, gripping with both hands, and running with excited abandon.

With the theme decided, I did a quick search for truck-themed cupcake cakes.  Let me clarify for those not familiar with this fabulous innovation, the cupcake cake.  Cupcakes are mini-cakes in and of themselves.  But a cupcake CAKE?  This is something marvelous and different.  This invention combines the ease of cupcakes with the decorating possibilities of cake together in a sweet-crumbed matrimony.

Cupcakes are arranged in a certain shape, and often frosted together to look like one large cake.  Hence, the cupcake cake.

Blowing out candles.

You can decorate them almost like you would a regular cake, but when it’s time to serve, everyone just pulls off a cupcake.  No cutting, no utensils or plates, and a lot fewer crumbs.  🙂

Fabulous, right?

Back to the dump truck (cupcake) cake…

I wish I could tell you I came up with this special cake on my own, but alas, my baking buddy Pinterest was the chief designer for this cupcake cake.

I found a few slightly varied versions of this adorable dump truck cupcake cake.  (Original source could not be found.)  Each picture used 25-30 cupcakes.  I wanted something smaller, so I scaled down the cake using 15 cupcakes.  (These are cookies ‘n cream cupcakes, deliciously moist and filled with Oreo chunks and white chocolate.  See the recipe HERE.)

When you make a cupcake cake, be sure to adhere the cupcakes to the serving surface using a dab of icing on the bottom of each cupcake. This prevents the cupcakes from sliding or falling off when you move the final cake.

I mixed up yellow and brown vanilla buttercream.  Dark icing colors are always hard to make.  It requires a lot of coloring to get the vibrant shade desired.  Cocoa powder or instant coffee helps tremendously when trying to get a black or brown.  Otherwise, the food coloring taste ruins the icing.  In this case, I went with cocoa powder.

To cut out some time and effort (knowing Mr. Smiles wouldn’t care), I didn’t use piping tips for the icing.  Instead, I just filled the bags and cut off the end to get a nice thick flow for the yellow.  For the brown, I cut just a small hole at first to do the detail piping and writing.  Then, I cut off more of the tip to frost the tires and dump load.

For special touches, I used yellow M&Ms and rainbow sprinkles.  Mr. Smiles was especially excited for the M&Ms.  If you don’t have M&Ms, a couple dots of yellow icing would do splendidly.  😉

Have you ever made a cupcake cake?  What shapes and themes did you get to explore?

Have a splendid week!

~Katie