Minion Cupcakes - How to Make

I made these minion cupcakes for a 1^st year birthday party. The cupcakes were ordered together with a 3D Minion Dave cake and both were made based on images shared by my customer.

Minion cupcakes decorated with various yellow and purple minion faces

A set of cute Minion cupcakes for a 1st year birthday party

I have covered the cake in my other post here. And this was how the cake looked like:

A Minion shaped birthday cake with silver alphabets on a blue cake board

Minion Birthday Cake

This post is all about the Minion cupcakes. As cute as these cupcakes look, I must admit that the original design is not mine. I merely remade these based on my customer’s request. So as usual, I tried to retrace the source of the image shared by my customer but unable to find the exact one on the internet. There are many variations of these cupcakes and so it is hard to tell who was the original designer.

Anyway, if you notice, the cupcake tops are rounded and the truth is, my cupcakes were not all so well rounded. I used a special technique to get them into such a shape. I cut the fondant using my round cutters and let them set in a small bowl. That way, the cutouts were rounded following the shape of the bowls. Once set, I removed them from my bowls and attached them to the cupcakes. To fill the gap in between the curved fondant top and the top of the cupcakes, I piped a generous amount of frosting in between.

Overall, I really enjoyed decorating these cupcakes. My customer was very happy that they turned out exactly as in the image she provided me. This is how I decorated the cupcakes:

How to Make Minion Cupcakes

These were the main supplies I used to decorate the cupcakes:

Cupcakes – I used my butter pound cake recipe for the cupcakes.
Buttercream – Buttercream was used to fill the gap between the cupcakes top and the fondant coverings.
Fondant
Round cutter set– I used this set to cut out the yellow and purple covering for the cupcakes.
Round plunger cutter set – this set is much smaller compared to the set above, and I used these to cut out the Minions’ eyes.
Edible silver paint and fine tipped cake decorating brush – This was used to paint the Minions’ goggles. I used the brush to dot the Minions’ eyes with white food coloring
Pizza cutting wheel
Sugarcraft knife
Individual cupcake covering (in plastic) – these are basically individual cupcake casings made of plastic and comes with a domed cover. Each casing can fit one cupcake. I used the domed covers as the mold to shape the yellow and purple fondant covering for the cupcakes. If you are unable to find these, you can use any container you have at home that is dome-shaped. You can even use the inside of a small bowl as the mold. Simply wait for the fondant to set it the dome shape first before adding on the rest of the deco.
AmeriColor white food color
Fondant glue

And this was how I put the Minion cupcakes together:

I started by baking the cupcakes. I baked a set of 12 cupcakes in white muffin cups.
While waiting for the cupcakes to cool down to room temperature, I prepared the toppers.
I started with yellow fondant and cut out 10 medium circles. And then I rolled my purple fondant and cut out 2 similar sized circles. In cutting the circles, I made sure they were slightly larger than the cupcake top diameter. This is because the cutouts are to be shaped into domes and in doing that, the diameter of the domes will become slightly smaller compared to the diameter of the cutouts as flat pieces.

The domes

I arranged the cut outs on my plastic cupcake covers such that they are all in a domed shape. The intention is to leave the cut out on the covers until they set in that shape.
While waiting for the cutouts to set, I added the Minions’ facial features. Since all the Minions had the goggles on, I started by making the goggles first.

The goggles

The goggles were cut out in white and painted in silver before being attached to the faces.
After the goggles, I added the black strips which was cut out of black fondant using a ruler and my pizza cutting wheel. These were attached to the fondant circles using glue. Once the black strips were all on, I added the tiny silver sausage-like pieces of the sides of each goggle. Similar to the goggles, these were made in white and painted in silver before being attached to the Minions’ faces.

The Minion eyes

Next were the eyes. The yellow Minions had brown and black eyes while the purples ones had purple and black eyes. I used my round plunger cutter to cut the eyes out of fondant and attached them inside the goggles earlier using fondant glue. For the white dots, I used a fine tipped brush and white food coloring and simply dotted the paint on the eyes.

The mouths

Once the eyes were done, I did the mouths. Since I remade these based on the image provided by my customer, I simply followed the mouth shapes as was in the image. I used my sugar craft knife to cut out rolled black fondant for the mouths and attached them on using glue.

The teeth

With that, the deco for the yellow Minion cupcakes was completed. For the purple ones, both had sets of white teeth showing and extra parts on the head. For the teeth, I pinched small pieces of fondant and formed them into tiny sausages shapes by hand. I attached these to the Minions’ faces using glue.
For the headpieces, one minion had spikes on the head while the other had a purple blob on. To make the spikes, I formed them by hand and attached to the Minion’s head with fondant glue. For the blob, I formed a round ball, flatted one side, and used a toothpick to mark it with tiny holes. I attached the blob to the Minion’s head with the side with holes pointing upwards.

2 cupcakes decorated with yellow and purple minion faces

With that, the decoration was completed. I left them aside until the fondant has really set and was able to hold the domed shaped once removed from the cupcakes covers.

Assembling the cupcakes

I then removed the covers carefully and added the minion toppers onto the cupcakes, one minion for each cupcake. Since the toppers were domed, there was quite a bit of gap between the cupcakes and the toppers.
To fill the gap and to make sure the toppers were held securely in place, I piped a swirl of icing on the cupcakes before adding the toppers. That way, not only the gap was filled, but the toppers were securely held in place.
With that, I completed my Minion cupcakes.