Easy Bow Tie Cupcakes

I came up with the idea for these cupcakes as I was planning my son’s Mr. ONE-derful Bow Tie Brunch. The chocolate cake used in these cupcakes is outstanding, and very easy to make. It’s also special to me because my mom used to make this for my birthday parties as a child. Most importantly, the name is great–Wacky Chocolate Cake. The recipe calls for vinegar and baking soda, so it is a bit of a wacky, science experiment.

Wacky Chocolate Cupcakes or Cake

• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 cups of flour
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 6 tablespoons of cocoa
• 2 teaspoons of baking soda
• 2 tablespoons of vinegar
• 2/3 cup of oil
• 2 tablespoons of vanilla
• 2 cups of water

Preheat oven to 350°.
For cupcakes: Line a cupcake tin with paper baking cups. Mix all the ingredients together, and pour into cups–about 3/4 full. Bake for 15-20 minutes depending on the size of the cupcake. Makes approx. 18 cupcakes.

For cake: Mix all the ingredients, pour into cake pan (this is suitable for 9 x 13 pan) and bake for 35 minutes. **Do not grease the pan.

For the frosting, I used a classic buttercream recipe and piped it on using a 1M (star) tip. Here are links to some of my white frosting recipes favorites:

Buttercream Frosting
Wedding Cake Frosting

My dilemma with these cupcakes was decorating them. I wanted to make bow ties out of chocolate candy, but it took me several trips to the candy section to figure out my game plan.

What I ended up with was cute, but not perfect (I am nuts, I know). But, everyone got the gist. I started with mini Reese’s cups, which come unwrapped, and I cut them in half. These would be “bows” of the tie.

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For the center of the bow tie, I used chocolate-covered peanuts. However, many of the peanuts in the package were actually too big, so I used chocolate chips as well.

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It’s not rocket-science obviously, but I just stuck the peanut or chocolate chip on one side of the frosting and then put the halves of the Reese’s on each side of peanut/chocolate chip to form the bow tie.

And just like every good black cocktail dress needs a little (or a lot) of bling a little sprinkle of gold sugar on top helped the cupcakes feel party-ready. It’s important to me that my food feel appropriately dressed.

All of my guests loved the look of the cupcakes, but more importantly, raved about how tasty they were. Success!