My husband and I decided to do a Curious George theme for our son’s first birthday party. I found the idea of monkey cupcakes on this site. I used a yellow cake mix and canned chocolate frosting for the cupcakes. To decorate them we chose M&Ms for eyes, mini fudge stripes sliced in half for the ears and vanilla wafers for the actual monkey face part. I used a black gel icing tube to make the pupils on the eyes and to draw two lines for the nose and to make the monkey’s expressions. We mixed it up and made all kinds of monkey looks, not just smiley faces!
My husband had a hard time visualizing the monkey’s face with just a vanilla wafer for the bottom half so we used the portion that we had sliced off to create the top of the monkey’s face. This anchored the face and helped us place the ears. I think they look most like monkeys if the ears are placed lower on the face. I kept one cupcake plain and added the number one candle to it for our son to actually eat and destroy. I arranged the monkey cupcakes in the shape of a large one to symbolize his first birthday. I displayed them on an upside down jelly roll pan that I had covered in red tissue paper. I later wrote Happy 1st Birthday Chase! with a black Sharpie directly onto the tissue paper. The cupcakes were a big hit and we thank you for the idea!
More Monkey Cupcakes
I made these monkey cupcakes for my son’s third birthday party after he requested a monkey party. I didn’t have the guts to attempt the “Martha Stewart” monkey cake so my mom ended up with that job but the cupcakes looked like fun so I gave them a try! I just copied the pictures I saw on this site and some others I found online. I had to throw the second picture in as my husband and I tried to find a way to cover them without the plastic wrap touching the monkey’s faces. We ended up with half of our kitchen drawers acting as barriers between the cupcakes and the plastic wrap and between all of the random objects on the cookie sheet and the looks on the monkeys’ faces.
I used the same general idea from another post on this site. Thanks for the great idea! Instead of nutter butters for the ears I used mini Nilla wafers with a bit cut off. Basically they are yellow cake mix, chocolate frosting recipe from the back of the Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa box, eyes are Cheerios, mouth is a large Nilla Wafer with a bit cut off and ears are like stated above. Nose and mouth are piped from same frosting.
These monkey cupcakes were a huge hit at my two year old twins birthday party with a theme of “Monkey See Monkey Do!”
I baked these cupcakes as box directed. I iced them with a dark chocolate icing. I cut mini nutter butters in half for the ears. I used cheerios for the eyes and I used a vanilla wafer with part cut off the mouth area. I put two dots if icing for the nostrils.