1UP mushroom cupcakes

When we RSVPed to a Halloween party, my boyfriend jokingly stated, knowing what our costumes would be, that we'll be bringing 'shrooms. So, I thought about sewing a 1UP mushroom out of polar fleece and stuffing it--making a 'shroom pillow for him to take with us. But when I was searching google images for 1UP mushroom, I stumbled across a posting for adorable 1UP cupcakes. I'm going to borrow that idea, but individualize it.

I'm not a 100% sure what type of cupcakes I'll make. I'd like to make a Halloween sort of flavor, like caramel apple or pumpkin. But I'll probably stick with my basic vanilla since they seem to be more like the color of the mushrooms:

Basic Vanilla Cupcakes

1-1/2 stick unsalted butter
1-2/3 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2-2/3 cups flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons milk
1-1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Let butter come to room temperature and beat it until softened. Add sugar and cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Then add eggs, one at a time, and beat until well combined.

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl.

3. In a separate large bowl, stir together the milk and vanilla.

4. Add about a third of the dry ingredients to the butter-sugar-eggs mixture and beat to combine. Beat in about half of the milk-vanilla mixture. Continue adding, alternating between dry and wet and finishing with the dry.

5. Scoop batter into cupcake pan (I’m undecided about paper liners—if I can find some that will look like the mushroom colors, then I might go with cups). Fill the cupcake cups to the brim (I want the batter to bake over, so it looks more like a mushroom). Bake cupcakes until cake tester comes out clean, about 22-25 minutes.


If I do basic vanilla cupcakes, I'm going to ice them in a cream cheese-buttercream frosting dyed green (straight cream cheese doesn't hold color as well as a buttercream mix). I'll pipe plain cream cheese frosting circles on them to mimic the mushroom dots. If I use liners, I might pipe small black eyes on the front of the liners to look like the 1UP mushroom eyes. But I can't decide if this would be too messy or not.