Superbowl Cupcakes With Cake Pop Football Toppers

We love football around our house! Or at least my son loves football! He’s counting down the days to the Superbowl, so I thought I’d put together some football cupcakes for him. I’ve been playing around a little with cake pops lately, but I’m not quite ready to share most of my results, yet. I was trying to decide what to make my football toppers out of. Chocolate? Fondant or gumpaste? Or cake pops? I decided to give cake pops a try for these, they didn’t turn out terrible, and it was great practice. I also made some goal posts from white chocolate. I wasn’t crazy about how they turned out, I’d probably try to make them from fondant and with wire the next time. Here are the final results for my football cupcakes.

Here they are with the white chocolate goal posts.

Here’s how I made them:

Superbowl Football Cupcake Instructions

Materials:

Your favorite cupcake mix, or recipe I like this vanilla cupcake recipe
Butter cream icing, or your favorite decorating icing
Melting chocolate (white for goal posts, milk chocolate for footballs)
Brown or football pattern scrapbook paper
Green food color
Decorator bags, or pastry bags
Wilton tip # 233
Decorator tip with a small round hole
Double sided tape
Parchment paper
Toothpicks

Directions:
1. Bake the cupcakes according to the package or mix directions, then set them aside to cool.

2. While the cupcakes are baking and cooling mix up your icing. Set aside about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of white icing, color the rest with the green food color. One batch of icing will decorate about 1 dozen cupcakes. If you’re making more than that you may want to double the recipe.

3. You can make some quick inexpensive wraps for your cupcakes from card stock. Simply cut 1 1/4 inch by about 9 inch strips.

4. Wrap the strip around and overlap it by about an inch. Hold it in place with a piece of double sided tape. Then set them aside.

5. If you are making the goal posts, sketch your post on a white sheet of paper, then lay a piece of parchment paper over the top. You should be able to see your sketch through the parchment paper.

6. Microwave the white melting chocolate according to the package directions. I melted mine in the microwave in 15 to 20 second intervals.

7. Put the melted chocolate in a plastic bag (be careful you don’t get it too hot). Cut the very tip out of the plastic bag and trace over the goal post in white chocolate. Move the pattern under the parchment paper and trace again.

8. While the chocolate is still melted insert a toothpick into the bottom of each post. If you need to cover it over with a little more chocolate. Leave about half of the toothpick sticking out of the bottom of the post to stick down into the cupcake and hold the goal post in place.

9. Once the cupcakes have cooled, crumble several of them into a bowl (about 2-3 for 1 dozen football cupcakes). Add 2-3 tablespoons of white icing to the mixture and crumble it together to make the football cake pops.

10. Take a small amount (about 1/2 teaspoonful) of the mixture and shape it into a football. Repeat the process until you have as many footballs as you need, or until you run out of cake pop mixture. You can always crumble another cupcake or two and make more mixture if you need to. Your kids would love to help with this part! Getting their fingers gooey, and shaping the footballs would be fun if you can handle the help!

11. Put the little footballs into the freezer for about 1/2 hour to get firm.

12. Just before you’re ready to pull the footballs out of the freezer melt about 1/2 cup of milk chocolate according to the package directions.

13. Once the footballs have had a chance to harden, remove them from the freezer and dip them in the melted chocolate. You’ll have to work fast! The footballs start to soften up, and the chocolate starts to harden.

14. After you dip the footballs in the chocolate place them on parchment paper, or wax paper to cool and harden. As you can see my footballs didn’t come out perfect!

15. Add the Wilton tip #233 to a pastry bag and fill it with the green icing. You can find the tip at most cake decorating stores, and even some large department stores like Walmart.

16. Ice the cupcakes with a thin layer of green icing, then use the tip to make your “grass.” Squeeze the decorator bag while you’re lifting up to get the grass look.

17. Once the footballs are hardened, take a small round tip and another pastry bag and make the strings on your football.

18. Now you’re ready for the final assembly! Set the footballs on top of the cupcake, and touch up any messy spots with the green icing. Place the cupcakes into the sleeves, and slide the goal posts into the cupcake top behind the footballs.