I was contacted by the ever so talented, Erin of Gypsy Sol Designs, to bake for her nieces high school graduation party. I was so excited when she showed me her inspiration for cactus cupcakes. I was stumped at first because I didn’t know how I would bake the cake in terra-cotta pots. I did a little research and a quick trial and error and found out that the suggestion of lining the pots with foil would simply not work. A standard sized liner wouldn’t sit high up enough to bring the cake to top of the pot so I got to thinking…I began pulling out all the liners that I own and figured out that tulip liners would do the best.
Here’s what you will need for cactus pot cupcakes
- Cupcakes baked in tulip liners
- mini cupcakes
- terracotta pots
- terracotta saucers
- frosting
- crushed oreos
- buttercream, dyed green (your going to want a buttercream that has some shortening in it to keep the points stable. I recommend using a buttercream that is half butter and half shortening).
- cake pop sticks
- piping bag & mini open star tip
Here’s what I did to create the ever so adorable and non-prickly sweet cacti cupcakes. Bake your cupcakes like normal, just remember that tulip liners hold double the amount of batter than a standard, I used two scoops. Once the cupcakes were cool I trimmed off the tulip points and placed the cupcake into the pot. Spread a thin layer of frosting on the cupcake and then top with a generous amount of crushed oreos to serve as your dirt. Place a mini cupcake on the dirt and stick a cake pop stick through to secure it, you might need to trim off a little of the stick so it sits flush. Pipe your green frosting by either starting at the base or the top. After I did a few I realized that starting at the top created a better looking cactus. When I was finished I decided they needed a feminine touch so I added a small pink flower.
Along with the super cute cacti cupcakes I baked a simple fiesta cake and churro cupcakes. This event was a lot of fun! I hope you add these cacti cupcakes to your next fiesta!
These cupcakes are super cute Melissa and seem easy to replicate
Thank you Ladana! They are pretty easy!
I work at Coldstone and make these all the time. We have to order the chocolate cups from some relaly far away fancy place, so our prices might actually go up soon to eleven dollars. We put everything together ourselves in the store… the cake, fudge, scoop of ice cream, we frost them, and package them. That can explain why there’s differences in the amount of cake; we eyeball on how much to put in. We’re only supposed to put an inch of cake so there’s room for the scoop of ice cream without it overflowing the cup, it makes it hard to frost when it’s so big. The more the ice cream overflows the cup, the more frosting needed to cover it, which makes them look big and weird and have too much frosting. Also, at least in my store (in Illinois), we customize the cupcake if someone asks us to. Say, if they want mint ice cream with chocolate cake, white frosting with a chocolate heart on top. We can sell them individually (for the price of a like it ice cream) by taking one out of the container or making one on the spot, but we prefer not to do that because it gets tedious with all the missing cupcakes needed to make a pack and it does take a few minutes to make on depending on what kind. But some Coldstones are different. Our bosses just relaly want us to always have a lot of each kind in the store. We have variety packs of 2 of each kind. Other stores barely bother. As for the “cake” issue, I think Coldstone is mostly trying to highlight the ice cream. Our cake is just a mix-in, its not supposed to be special. What makes the cupcakes special is the ice cream. That’s why its in there, and not so much cake.And Becky, the LABEL on the top of the cupcake container had SWEET CREAM colored in, letting you know it was just sweet cream cupcakes in the container. At least, that’s what I saw in the picture. A variety pack would have each circle colored in.I personally like them. I didn’t have trouble eating one, probably b/c I had left it in the freezer to harden and then cut it in half (was sharing it with my boyfriend) and ate it. Mine was sweet cream with oreos mixed in and yellow cake. My favorite part was actually the shell. The dark chocolate was relaly good. It’s just a creative way to eat the ice cream, a small version of an ice cream cake.