Gloverly Cupcakes

I went through a phase a couple of years ago of making minion cakes. Since then the minion baking has been limited but I’ve been wanting to make some cupcakes like these for a while. So for Tom’s hockey match a month ago I made a batch of yellow minions with 2 evil purple minions. It was a bit of a rush so I shoved them in the box without managing to get any good photos. I really wanted to share them on the blog so I decided to make them again! I made them again the following week for the cake trolley at work. There’s a lot of cutting out circles from icing which is quite time consuming, but most of that can be done in advance, and then the actual assembly isn’t too bad. For each minion you need to cut out either one of two of the following (depending on how many eyes you want them to have!):

• Grey ring – I used a small round cutter to make a circle which I moved onto a board. I then used the fat end of a piping nozzle to cut the middle out. I moved them to the board before cutting the middle out so that they kept their round shape better.
•  White circle – I made two sizes for the one and two eyed minions. I used the end of two different size plain piping nozzles.
• Brown circle – I used the end of a plain nozzle.
• Black circle – I used the end of a plain nozzle.
• Black strips – I used a strip cutter to cut out lots which I covered in clingfilm until I needed them so that they stayed soft and were easy to cut into the sizes I needed once I’d put the eyes on the cakes.
• For the yellow minions you also need to make small cones or lines of black icing for the hair (if you’re giving them hair).
• For each of the purple minions you also need 3-5 small rectangles/triangles of white icing for the teeth.

Technically the purple minions should have a plain icing face with buttercream piped on for the hair just on the top above the eyes. But I decided it was easier just to pipe buttercream over the whole minion using a grass tip. I then arranged the eyes and teeth on top of them. For the yellow minions, I piped buttercream onto the top in the middle and then covered with a large circle of yellow icing. I smoothed it down to the edges using the palm of my hand. I stuck the eyes and hair on with a small amount of water and used the edge of a small round cutter and ball tool to create different mouths.