Three Easy Football Cupcakes Recipe

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Three different football cupcakes that are so easy to make and perfect for a party or tailgating!

Three different football cupcakes that are so easy to make and perfect for a party or tailgating!

I’ve been really into easy cupcakes lately. In fact, I have three easy HALLOWEEN cupcakes coming your way soon! But for now, let’s make cupcakes for football season. Do you like football? I used to. Until I got married ????.

I think I’m loving cupcakes right now because they are just SO rewarding to make. With relatively little effort, cute cupcakes can be a total statement piece for events and get-togethers.

And seriously, they don’t even have to be good, if you know what I mean. You don’t have to be a professional cake decorator or a whiz with a piping tip or anything like that! You could do a haphazard piping job, and these cupcakes will still basically turn out right.

More or less ????.

Three different football cupcakes that are so easy to make and perfect for a party or tailgating!

These simple chocolate frosted footballs are my favorite of the three. Use a Wilton Open Star Tip to squigle a football shape on top of the cupcake, and then use a round tip to pipe on the seams– it’s just 4 straight lines, you can do that!

Three different football cupcakes that are so easy to make and perfect for a party or tailgating!

Normally I would use Wilton’s Grass Tip for the green frosting. But I had some sort of tip malfunction today and had to switch things up to use the open star tip (see? you can’t mess these up!). I just did a sloppy pipe job with the green frosting and added a chocolate covered almost for the football.

I used Wilton’s smallest round tip to pipe the football seams on the almond. Easy.

Three different football cupcakes that are so easy to make and perfect for a party or tailgating!

Again, I would have preferred to use the Grass Tip on this one, but rolling with the punches, I used the open star tip for the grass again. It’s fine.

And how cute is this simple idea? The rainbow nonpareils are the fans in the stands behind the goal post (which is just piped on with a round tip). Too fun!

Three different football cupcakes that are so easy to make and perfect for a party or tailgating!

I’m putting my favorite chocolate cupcake and chocolate frosting recipe below. If you’d rather make a vanilla cupcake, click here for my favorite recipe.

And FYI– I just used Pillsbury Vibrant Vanilla frosting in green (bought at Target) for the grass. It’s the perfect color. But feel free to color your own buttercream if you feel like being an overachiever ????.

Three different football cupcakes that are so easy to make and perfect for a party or tailgating!

Three Easy Football Cupcakes

Yield: 2 dozen

Three different football cupcakes that are so easy to make and perfect for a party or tailgating!

Ingredients

Cupcakes:

  • 18.25 ounce devil’s food cake mix
  • 3 oz pkg instant chocolate pudding mix
  • 1 cup sour cream or Greek yogurt (fat free or regular for both works fine)
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • pinch of sea salt
  • 2 cups semi-sweet mini chocolate chips (optional)

Chocolate Frosting:

  • 12 ounce package semisweet (or any mixture of) chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup salted butter
  • 8 ounces sour cream or Greek yogurt
  • 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Toppings:

  • white frosting for piping football seams and goal post
  • green frosting for piping the grass
  • chocolate covered almonds for the footballs
  • rainbow nonpareils

Instructions

Cupcakes:

  1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
  2. Beat together all of ingredients until smooth batter forms, reserving the chocolate chips if using.
  3. Mix in the chocolate chips with a rubber spatula.
  4. Divide batter evenly in two (12-count) cupcake tins. Bake for 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool completely.

Frosting:

  1. Place the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for 60 seconds, or until butter is melted completely.
  2. Add the chocolate chips to the bowl and stir until chocolate chips are very melted. When you feel like the chocolate chips won't melt any more just from being in the warm butter, place the bowl back in the microwave and heat for 30 seconds. Remove and stir until chocolate chips are completely melted and smooth (nuke an additional 30 seconds if necessary).
  3. Use an electric mixer to mix in the sour cream.
  4. Add the powdered sugar a cup at a time and the vanilla extract, mixing well in between each addition.

Decorating the Football Cupcake:

  1. Use the wilton open star tip to "squigle" a football shape using the chocolate frosting on top of the cupcakes (see photo).
  2. Use a small wilton round tip to pipe white frosting seams over the chocolate frosting.

Decorating the Football Field Cupcake:

  1. Use the Wilton grass or open star tip to pipe green frosting "grass" all over the top of the cupcake.
  2. Place a chocolate covered almond in the center of the "grass."
  3. Use the smallest Wilton round tip to pipe seams on the almond.

Decorating the Goal Post Cupcake:

  1. Spread chocolate frosting in a thin layer over the top of the cupcake.
  2. Pour nonpareils onto a plate. Dip the top half of frosted cupcake in the nonpareils.
  3. Use the grass tip or the open star tip to pipe "grass" on the bottom half of the cupcake.
  4. Use the small round tip to pipe white frosting in the shape of a goal post.
Three different football cupcakes that are so easy to make and perfect for a party or tailgating!
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