It's tailgating season folks! Break out your team jackets, coats, mufflers, shirts, long johns, underwear, ear muffs, facepaint ect. ect. ect. You know who you are! Superfans unite! Around these parts we take our football seriously. I am a diehard Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan. My husband on the other hand is a lifelong Cowboys fan. In our house we talk about everything controversial but not football lol. We agree to disagree. I've been through everything with the Bucs. High highs...the glow from the 2002 Super Bowl is still warm lol and low lows...12 consecutive 10 loss seasons—an NFL record. Yeah. Nothing like living with a Cowboys fan. 'Nuff said right there.
I thought it was pretty cool when I was introduced to #SnickersMinis (SNICKERS® Brand NFL Minis sold exclusivly at Walmart). Although, I didn't find any Buccaneers logos in the bag. I wasn't pleased. They did have the Cowboys though. In fact they had lots of them. Not cool Snickers. But oh you taste so good so I'll forgive you!
Tailgating is fun. If you haven't done it I highly recommend it. There are plenty of traditional and crazy main course and appetizer ideas for tailgating but I noticed that their weren't too many desserts. Mostly everything was in the shape of the football. Even I toyed around with the idea of football shaped cake pops. I really love rad and cute stuff like that. In fact I'm a sucker for it, no pun intended.. But then I thought, "HEY! I'm making something with Snickers...maybe I should make the whole cupcake about Snickers! I'll make a cupcake for the Snickers' Super Fans!" And thus my evil genius mastermind was used for good.
Since my family was going to drop off Josh to college again in the aftermath of James' funeral, (more coming on that in a future post) I decided to stop off at Walmart before the girls got too rowdy. It was almost impossible to find the SNICKERS® Brand NFL Minis but..again I'm a evil genius mastermind and so I looked behind the regular Snickers Mini's. Hold your applause. I know. I'm awesome. I got the stuff I needed plus a few goodies for the trip we were undertaking. I boot scoot boogied on outta there and once again we were teenagerless. Just us four. It made me really sad knowing I had one taste tester up in heaven and one off to college. The whole process was off so I waited till last minute to do this post.
And then it happened. I was happily making buttercream this morning with Natalie. Everything was going smoothly until Natalie decided to help me out by throwing a carnation in the mixer while it was going at full speed. Not only did the beautiful buttercream have bits of torn up crimson carnation in it but it also absolutely ruined the structure of the buttercream beyond repair. I was totally willing to look up to see if carnations were edible.
Yeah I was going to go there..but it wasn't meant to be. It was a total fumble. I couldn't redo the buttercream because I just used 4 sticks of butter in the darn buttercream and 1 in the cake and 2 in the popcorn. Being the evil mastermind genius that I am I had to come up with another solution: Dip the dang cupcake in chocolate, slap the Snickers popcorn I made on top and call it good.
Snickers Superfan Cupcakes by Momma Cupcake
For Snickers Popcorn:
6-8 cups of popcorn
2 sticks butter
2 1/4 light brown sugar
3/4 light corn syrup
1/2 sea salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups roasted peanuts, shelled
1 tbs pure vanilla extract
1 bag of chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 250F. Lay popcorn on baking sheet lined with parchment paper. In large saucepan, melt butter. Add sugar, corn syrup & salt. Bring to boil. Reduce to medium low for 3 minutes. Take off heat. Stir in vanilla and baking soda. (Baking soda makes the mixture opaque. It also makes it bubble up so keep stirring to keep the mixture at a good level.) Pour over mixture over popcorn. Toss lightly making sure to evenly distribute caramel. While still hot add peanuts on top. Put in oven and let bake for 1 hour. When done let popcorn mixture cool completely. Melt chocolate in microwave on high for 1 minute stopping at the 30 mark to stir. Drizzle chocolate over popcorn. Put in freezer for a few minutes to help chocolate set quickly. Enjoy!
For Vanilla Cupcakes:
1 3/4 cake flour
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3 large eggs, room temp
1 stick of unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
2 tsps pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk.
16 SNICKERS® Brand NFL Minis
8 Werther's Originals Chewy Caramels.
In a bowl mix together flour, baking powder and soda with whisk. In stand mixer beat together butter and sugar on medium until light and fluffy. Add eggs on at a time beating for 30 seconds after each one. Add vanilla and mix until incorporated. Alternatively add flour mixture and buttermilk until just incorporated. Pour into lined jumbo cupcake tins 2/3rds of the way full. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until slightly browned around edges. While still hot push 2 SNICKERS® Brand NFL Minis into the cupcake then flatten caramels between your thumbs. Add caramel on top of cupcake. All will melt but harden when cool.
To Assemble:
1 bag of chocolate chips
Melt chocolate as before. Take wrappers off of cooled cupcakes. Dip cupcakes into chocolate turning with fork. Lift cupcake out of chocolate, shaking off excess with even vertical movements. Place on cookie racks with a cookie sheet underneath to catch drippings. Add popcorn when chocolate is starting to set. Drizzle additional chocolate over popcorn.
If you'd like to see my shopping experience and/or the play-by-play for making the cupcakes please visit my Google+ Story! To keep up on the latest going on with Snickers, visit these links:
I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and SNICKERS® Brand #CBias #SocialFabric.
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