Baby Chick Cupcake Cake

It was so fun creating my first pull-apart cake for St. Patrick's Day, a Leprechaun Hat Cupcake Cake, that I got right back into the kitchen to make this sweet Baby Chick Cupcake Cake for Easter.

I know many of you host lots of guests on Easter Sunday and these types of cakes make a great dessert for a crowd. There's no need for you to cut the cake as your party guests can simply pull the cupcakes from the cake.

Plus they are so easy to make.

RELATED: You can see all of my Easter recipes, here.

Ingredients

Lemon Cupcakes

• lemon cake mix
• instant lemon pudding mix
• sour cream
• eggs
• water
• vegetable oil

Lemon Frosting

• butter
• freshly squeezed lemon juice
• lemon zest
• powdered sugar

Rice Krispie Treats

• Use store-bought or homemade Rice Krispie Treats to fill in between the cupcakes.

Supplies

• pastry bags
• star piping tips (use anything between #18 and #22)
• cake board or large serving platter

Instructions

You'll start by baking a batch of lemon cupcakes and making some lemon frosting. I chose to just doctor up a lemon cake mix to make this dessert quick and easy and I topped them with homemade lemon frosting.

To make a cake mix taste homemade all you have to do is add some pudding mix and sour cream along with the ingredients called for on the box. This makes an incredibly moist and delicious cake.

Lemon Cupcakes

• Combine 1 lemon cake mix with 3 tablespoons lemon pudding mix, 3 tablespoons sour cream, 3 eggs, 1 cup water, and ⅓ cup oil. (Change the quantities if your lemon cake mix calls for different amounts of eggs, water, and oil.)
• Beat, using an electric mixer, on low speed for 30 seconds then increase the speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes.
• Spoon into 24 cupcake liners.
• Bake for 18-20 minutes until the cupcake springs back when your press the center with your finger.
• Cool completely.

Lemon Frosting

• Beat 2 sticks (1 cup) of softened butter until light and fluffy.
• Add ¼ cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of lemon zest, and 2 cups of powdered sugar and beat just to combine.
• Add an additional 2 ½ cups of powdered sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about a minute.

Color the frosting:

• Remove 1 cup of the frosting then color the remaining frosting using yellow food coloring.
• Leave about ⅓ cup of the frosting white.
• Color ½ cup of the frosting orange.
• Color the remaining frosting black.

Arrange the cupcakes.

• Arrange 21 cupcakes in an oval on a cake board or serving platter.

Fill the gaps in your cupcake cake with rice krispie treats.

When you arrange cupcakes together to form the oval shape of your Baby Chick Cupcake Cake there will be gaps in between the round little cakes. Those larger holes need to be filled to have a flat surface to cover with frosting. You can cut cupcakes into pieces to fill the gaps or use marshmallows, but I prefer to use cereal treats.

• Rice Krispie Treats can be molded into just the right shape to fill in the gaps in between the cupcakes.
• The treats taste great covered in a bit of frosting!
• Rice Krispie Treats are easy to make:
  • Melt 2 tablespoons of butter with 4 ounces of marshmallows then mix in 2 cups of rice krispie cereal.
  • Let it cool just enough so that you can pick it up and mold it into shapes.
  • Press the cereal treats into a shape that will fit in between 4 cupcakes.
• Or you can just use store-bought cereal treats as I did.
  • Just cut them, if needed, and mold them into the shape needed to fill the gaps between the cupcakes.
  • I used 4 cereal treats to fill in the gaps in this cupcake cake.

Pipe frosting over top of the cupcakes and cereal treats.

• Fit 4 pastry bags with star tips. You can use tips that range in size from #18 to #22.
• Fill one bag with yellow frosting, one with white, one with orange, and one with black.
• Pipe frosting stars onto the cupcakes and cereal treats.
• Start by piping on the round black pupils for the chick's eyes then add white around the black.
• Add a beak under the eyes.
• Then pipe yellow over the rest of the cake.
• Pipe on two feet using orange frosting.

How to use a star tip?

• Hold your pastry bag (which is fitted with a star tip and filled with frosting) just above the cupcake.
• With gentle pressure squeeze a small amount of frosting out of the pastry bag.
• Gently push the frosting down onto the cake then stop squeezing the bag and quickly pull up.
• The frosting will break off from the pastry bag forming a star-shaped peak of frosting on your cupcake.

Related Recipes

You might also like these other baby chick-themed recipes.