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Recipe Goldmineon

How to Make Cupcake Sandwiches

Dennis Weaver

Debbie, my daughter and our operations manager, makes cupcake sandwiches. She makes really pretty cupcake sandwiches. And they’re easy. She makes them in all colors and all flavors. How about a raspberry cream cupcake sandwich—one made with a raspberry cupcakes and a raspberry cream filling? Or a lemon pie cupcake sandwich? Or a chocolate fudge cupcake sandwich?

You can make all these with a boxed cake mix and frosting mix—incredible desserts that anyone can make.

So how do you do it? It’s a very simple concept. You take two cupcake tops (just the tops) and make a sandwich with frosting or frosting and pastry filling between the two.

But how do you make the tops? To make it easy, use a box cake mix. Then scoop batter into the depressions on a muffin top pan. Instead of making muffin tops, you’re making cupcake tops. You can “doctor-up” the cake mix by adding colors and flavors.

The filling is the most fun.

Cupcake Sandwiches

You can fill them with frosting or you can fill them with a combination of frosting and pastry filling. Most are make with only frosting. But it’s no more work to add pastry filling and I really like pastry filling. (Pastry filling—that’s the good stuff that your baker puts in filled donuts, apple turnovers, and cream puffs. It comes in cream fillings like Bavarian cream, chocolate, and cream cheese and fruit fillings like apple, raspberry, and lemon.)

Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Bake the cupcake tops.

Mix the batter per the package directions. Scoop batter into each of the indentations on your muffin top pan. We use a large ice cream scoop that holds 1/4 cup to get just the right amount of batter each time. (The slide action in the scoop cleanly releases the batter.) Bake the tops and put them on a wire rack to cool. Since the tops are thinner than cupcakes, they bake quicker than cupcakes—ten minutes in our oven. Set the timer early and check them with a toothpick.

Step 2: Assemble the cupcake sandwiches.

Match the cupcake tops up in pairs. Holding a cupcake top upside down, squeeze a rim of frosting around the perimeter of the cupcake top. Debbie usually makes a double frosting ring. If you are going to fill the cupcakes with pastry filling, fill the interior of the ring with pastry filling now. If not, continue filling the ring with frosting. Place a top on the filled cupcake, top up, to complete the sandwich. Shake sprinkles or other decorations on the exposed frosting.

We’ve seen bake shops that make and sell cupcake sandwiches. They use tons and tons of frosting, twice what we do. They’re really pretty but we like our balance of frosting to cake better.

What you’ll need

A muffin top pan. (You’re making cupcake tops instead of muffin tops.)

A box cake mix. (You can add chips, candy pieces, flavors, and colors.)

Buttercream frosting. (You can use our buttercream mix or your favorite recipe)

Pastry fillings. (optional)

Decorations. (optional)

These are some of the combinations to try:

Chocolate cupcakes with peppermint flavor, mint green frosting, and chocolate sprinkles.

Huckleberry cupcakes (a white cake mix, electric purple color, and huckleberry flavor), with huckleberry frosting, and purple sprinkles.

Chocolate cupcakes and blue raspberry frosting with chocolate sprinkles. Use sky blue color and raspberry flavor.

Lemon cupcakes with lemon filling. Use a lemon cake mix and lemon frosting to make an outer ring of frosting on a cupcake top. Fill inside the ring with lemon pastry filling. Use lemon flavor and lemon yellow color for the frosting.

To learn more about filled cupcakes and get more cupcake sandwich ideas and recipes, download “Sweet Treats: How to Make Cupcake Sandwiches, Stuffed Pancakes, and Other Sweet Treats.”

Tips for success

We use brand name cake mixes like Betty Crocker. Some store brands seem to be more crumbly.

Don’t over bake the tops
Because they are thin, they bake quickly—ten minutes in our oven.

Cool the tops in the pan for a few minutes before removing them. The tops become sturdier and less likely to break as they cool.

You can put a scoop of ice cream on top of the sandwiches and serve them with a spoon or fork.

If you have a large number of sandwiches to make with a small decorator set, use Debbie’s trick: She scoops all the frosting into a large gallon zipper type bag and then snips the corner and presses the frosting from the plastic bag to the decorator set to refill it. It’s much quicker than spooning frosting into the decorator set tube each time.

When you use pastry fillings, don’t overload the sandwiches. Pastry fillings are intense enough that you don’t need a lot to balance the cake.

Dennis Weaver is the president of The Prepared Pantry (http://www.preparedpantry.com/), a full line kitchen store in Rigby, Idaho. The Prepared Pantry sells kitchen tools, gourmet foods, and baking ingredients including hundreds of hard-to-find ingredients.

Dennis Weaver can be reached at dweaver@preparedpantry.com