Bun down, shoe, mustard, pan, bun...no!

One of my friends absolutely loves cheeseburgers, to that point that we refer to her as Wimpy.  This year, for her birthday, I decided to make little cheeseburger cupcakes.

To make the cupcakes, I made a batch of cupcakes (lazy doctored box mix) in an unlined cupcake tin.  I just greased the sides with cake release, as I didn't want the little squiggles in the side of the cupcakes that are left by normal wrappers.  I did the same thing with a regular ole box brownie mix.

While everything was cooling, I tinted four heaping serving spoons full of buttercreme.  One bright yellow, one an orangey color, one green, and one red.  I used Wilton's gel colors.  For the cheese, I started with yellow, and then added just a little bit too much copper.  Then I added some more yellow until I got something that I liked.  To get such a pretty red color, I started out with a little burgundy.  I then added the no-taste red, and just a smidgen of yellow to cool it down.  This was the longest color; true red in icing can be a major pain to get right, lol.  When I had the colors mixed the way I wanted them, I put them in piping bags using what's known as the plug method.  I don't really remember what tip I used, other than it was a small round metal Wilton tip.

To do the plug method, all you do is lay out a piece of saran wrap and blob your icing on it.  Roll it up, twist one end, and stick it in the piping back with the twisted end sticking up.  If you do it right, you won't get icing all over your bags, making it easier to reuse them. 

When everything was cooled, I cut the tops off of the brownies, and the cupcakes in half.  I took a cupcake bottom, and made blobs on the edges of the bun, with some hanging over and down the sides.  Then I went back, and made squiggles around the edges.  I really just free-handed this, kinda eyeballing it.  I also put a dab in the middle to help hold the brownie on there.  When I was happy with my lettuce, I took the cut off crown of a brownie cupcake(trimming the very top of the dome if need be) and threw it on top.  Well, actually, I gingerly place and re-placed it until I was happy with it's positioning, but who's counting, right?  On top of that, I used the orange-y yellow to draw a caddy-wampus square of cheese.  I didn't fill in the middle, I just concentrated on the corners.  On top of that went squiggles of mustard (yellow frosting) and ketchup (red frosting - or vice versa if you have weird mustard and ketchup).  I tried to make it look globs of condiments dripping down the sides.  I contemplated doing white for mayo, but you rarely see mayo done in squiggles.  Usually it's just globbed on in the middle, like it has no class.  The top of a cupcake was perched jauntily on top of all of that.

For a final touch, I moistened a brush (the brush that I greased the pan with, actually) with a little water and gently dabbed the tops of the cupcakes.  I sprinkled sugar crystals on top in place of sesame seeds, but you could always use real sesame seeds if you wanted to.