April Fools! Nachos or Cupcakes?!?

With April fools day coming up, I just had to do something fun for the boys’ preschool class.  When Keanna was in preschool I made these totally fun spaghetti cupcakes.

Looks like it belongs on a potluck table!

Piped frosting, strawberry jam, Ferrero
Rocher, and grated white chocolate.

But I’m not very creative.  I get all my really good ideas from other people.  Enter Pinterest!  My sister found this post about nacho cupcakes from Sweet Simple Stuff.  And they really are simple!  A lot of the fun cupcakes I’ve done in the past require a lot of little candies and cereal that I normally don’t have on hand.  

Had to buy:  sandwich cookies, root beer Jelly Bellys,
and Milk Duds

Had to buy:  chocolate wafer cookies, orange slice candy,
candy-coated sunflower seeds

But for these, I only had to go buy the sour straws.

You can use any cupcake recipe or any frosting (even canned!).  I chose to go with yellow cake (using this recipe with yellow cake mix and vanilla pudding) and a vanilla powdered sugar frosting.

The cinnamon chips are super easy to make and are a great treat!  I’ve made these before and served them with fruit and peanut butter dip.  All you do is get some cinnamon sugar to stick to a tortilla, cut it into wedges, and bake them.  You can use cooking spray to get the cinnamon sugar to stick.  But I don’t buy cooking spray so I just brush some water onto each tortilla.  You could also use melted butter.

One thing that helps get the realism is to put your cupcakes in a dish that you’d expect to use for nachos.  I went with a 9X13 cake pan, a pie plate, and some to-go boxes.

Cinnamon Chips

Flour tortillas (soft taco size work best)

Water, cooking spray, or melted butter

Cinnamon sugar

Preheat oven to 425°.  Brush or spray each tortilla with water, cooking spray, or melted butter.  Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Using a pizza cutter, cut tortilla into wedges.

I wanted small chips for the cupcakes so I cut
each tortilla like this.

For a sweet snack, I just cut them into wedges.

Transfer to baking sheet.  Bake 7-9 minutes or until golden brown and crispy.  Chips will crisp up as they cool.

Soooo yummy!!

Nacho Cupcakes

Cupcakes

Frosting, tinted with yellow and orange

Strawberry or raspberry jam

Cinnamon chips

Sour straws, snipped

Position cupcakes in dish right against each other.  Place a blob of frosting on each one and spread cupcake cake style, covering cupcakes completely.  Or you could pipe the frosting as Sweet Simple Stuff does.

Yes, it's technically a CCC.  Sorry, Jen.

Add a dollop of jam on top of each cupcake.

My apologies for this horribly yellow, 80's fluorescent
lighting photo.

Insert cinnamon chips into frosting and sprinkle with snipped sour straws.

What kid (or grown-up) wouldn't be excited to see this
on the table on April Fools day?!?

If you want to go all out, you could add a little vanilla or plain yogurt for sour cream and snipped black licorice for olives.