The Minions from Despicable Me are all the rage at the moment. My daughter absolutely loves watching them, and her face lights up when she hears the music from the movie.
With her second birthday coming up, we decided that we wanted to incorporate the Minions in some way, and making a birthday cake shaped like one was perfect. But I wanted to test my skills are doing them first. Coloring the marzipan and then shaping it perfectly has never been a strong point for me. So, I decided on doing Minion cupcakes to start with. And I’m really happy with the way they’ve turned out, so I’m sharing the recipe and the steps with you.
Ingredients:
175g flour
175g caster sugar
175g unsalted butter
3 eggs
Marzipan (I used a full pack, but then I’m happy to go a little overboard with it)
Blue, black and yellow food coloring (if you can find golden marzipan as well as white, you won’t need the yellow food coloring)
If you don’t have a kitchen scale, try this online measurements converter. Note that it will not be as exact.
Directions:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (350-355 F)
2. Mix the sugar and butter together.
3. Sieve the flour into the mixture and fold in.
4. Beat the eggs in a bowl and then add to the flour mixture. Mix well to create a batter.
5. Line your muffin tray with muffin cases and then evenly spread the mixture between them. The mixture will make 12 muffins.
6. Bake for 20 minutes.
Allow the muffins to cool before working on the decoration.
For the Minion Decoration:
1. Split your marzipan into different bowls.
2. Add a few drops of food coloring to each bowl, so you have a yellow, blue and black mixture. Reserve some white marzipan for the eyes.
3. Make sure the marzipan is colored completely before moving onto the next stage.
4. Flatten out parts of the yellow marzipan so it is large enough to cover the cupcakes. Roll it out with a rolling pin if necessary. Getting golden marzipan will help to keep the mess to a minimum. Cover the 12 muffin tops with the yellow marzipan.
5. Take the blue marzipan and fashion a set of dungarees out of them. You will need a rectangle for the front part and then two smaller rectangles for the straps.
6. Use some extra yellow marzipan to lay across the dungaree straps. Fashion it into rectangles for arms.
7. Take one to two small balls of white marzipan and flatten them into eyes. Place them on the top of the muffins. Remember some Minions only have one eye!
8. Take two smaller balls of black marzipan for the pupils. Then take two more pieces and turn them into a sausage shape. These need to go around the outside of the white marzipan to create the goggles. Use two more smaller pieces in a sausage shape to create the straps for the goggles.
9. Use a small black ball of marzipan and shape it into a mouth piece.
10. Take two small balls of black marzipan and flatten them to create hands. Place them on the end of the yellow arms.
You have full creative control over the expressions you give your minions.
Alternative Decoration Ideas:
1. Instead of adding arms, you can leave a gap between the straps and the main part of the dungarees. You will have a small section of yellow marzipan on show, which makes it look like the Minions have their hands down.
2. You don’t need to do the dungarees at all. One option is to just have the minion faces. This will eliminate the need for the blue marzipan, and will require a little more black and white marzipan as the expressions can be bigger.
Minion cupcakes are messy to make, but I personally believe that it is worth it in the end.
I love minions and i definitely love this minion cakes. They look so delicious. 😀