Remember that Mario Birthday Party Brainstorm article? It is full of great ideas, but sorely lacking photos. Now my kids are asking for another Mario Party this spring, so we’re perfecting our favorite Mario Party ideas and documenting them in individual articles. Starting with 1-up Mushroom Cupcakes, perfect for a Mario Birthday Party, or even just a fun Saturday afternoon activity… my kids and the neighborhood children that came over sure enjoyed it!
Ingredients:
– Mini Cupcakes or Muffins – enough for your Mario party plus a few spares
– Almond Bark
– Frosting – I used Betty Crocker Lemon
– Food Coloring
– Mini Chocolate Chips
– Small round candies for the spots (M&Ms, smarties, etc)
You’ll also need
– Waxed Paper
– A cookie sheet or large plate (Put the wax paper on this)
– At least two custard cups (one more for each extra mushroom color)
For the mushroom stem and its eyes, melt 2-3 ounces of the Almond Bark in a small glass custard cup or tiny bowl according to the directions on the package. Holding a cupcake by its top, carefully swirl the bottom of the cup cake till it’s coated up just up to the edge where the mushroom top will begin.
Let the extra glaze drip off a little while you add two mini chocolate chip eyes. Press the pointed end into the glaze so you’re left with tiny round eyes. Stand this mini mushroom cupcake up on the waxed paper, and then repeat with the next cupcake.
If the cupcake crumbles a little, scoop out the crumbs, then reheat your coating a little to make it easier to work with. And of course, you can melt a little more when you start to run out. The small quantity makes it manageable.
Once your Mario cupcakes all have stems, put all of them in the fridge to cool off for at least 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, scoop your frosting into glass custard cups, and food-color it till it’s a shade you like. 1up mushrooms are green with white spots, but other mario mushrooms have been red with white spots, or orange with red spots (in the old-school Mario Brothers).
After checking to be sure your mushroom cupcake stems are hard enough (they should easily come up off the wax paper), microwave the frosting for about 10 seconds to thin it out. Now grab each mushroom cupcake by the stem and swirl it in the frosting, coating up to part where the stem begins. Again, turn the mushroom to the side a little to let the excess drip off. Then press the candy spots in hard enough that they’ll stick, and set the mushroom back on its waxed paper to cool.
And that should be it! Serve them up on a cute plate, possibly with a star shaped icecream cake for a large party (I’ll post THAT how-to soon), and you’re ready to party Mario style! If you’re looking for other ideas for your Mario party, you can find several here. Enjoy 🙂
Legend of Velda 
Awesome! Did they taste as good as they look?
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Sorry for the triple tweet! They were actually really good! I used blueberry muffins from smiths. The lemon frosting and white chocolate coating was a nice touch.
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and I might add, the kids had a blast making them. No special occasion just yet, but we were testing them out for a Mario party we’ll have this spring.
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Awesome! Did they taste as good as they look?
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Sorry for the triple tweet! They were actually really good! I used blueberry muffins from smiths. The lemon frosting and white chocolate coating was a nice touch.
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and I might add, the kids had a blast making them. No special occasion just yet, but we were testing them out for a Mario party we’ll have this spring.
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Oh, also if you can’t find white M&Ms, you could drop some almond bark on the wax paper, let it cool, and use THOSE for spots.
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Oh, also if you can’t find white M&Ms, you could drop some almond bark on the wax paper, let it cool, and use THOSE for spots.
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m&ms! I wish I thought of that! I used the tube of frosting.
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We used white chocolate and chocolate chips for the yellow cupcakes and regular chocolate and white chocolate chips for the chocolate ones. We used mega sugar buttons for the spots. I cheated and bought pre made icing and uniced cupcakes from the grocery store. Saved one hour prep time! Great for a working mom that wants to wow their son at his party! They were a hit!
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Heheh, yeah I bought the cupcakes too last time I made them, and the frosting as well. I work and go to school and do the whole single mom thing now. Store bought icing and cupcakes = Definitely not cheating! 🙂
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I did an easier version of this by using white cake and therefor not having to coat the bottoms of the cupcakes. The original mushroom in the first Super Mario Bros. game had a bottom that was not white anyway so it worked out well. For the domes I used white vanilla frosting dyed with food color to match the original Super Mario mushroom colors. For the white spots on the domes I used white chocolate chips with the points in the chip cut off with a steak knife, which made white chocolate discs in seconds. The tips where used as white spots on a miniature version of the same cupcakes. It came out great, but I gave them away to a room full of people 40 years old and up, and nobody knew what they were, or what a Mario Brother was for that matter, except the lone 28 yearold girl in the crowd, who almost died of their “adorableness”.
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lol. Hooray for the lone 28 year old. When I did this with kids, they got it, but most of their mothers (even the younger (?) ones like me) had no idea and either had never played Mario games or just couldn’t remember the deal with mushrooms. Tragic really. Guess I’m just a geeky little video game fanatic. And proud of it 😉
I’d tried something like this with white cake in my experiments and couldn’t quite get the wrappers to come off evenly.. and if I baked them without wrappers, they just looked brown. But I didn’t try a pure white cake with egg whites and all so maybe that was it? I am glad you were able to make it work. Nicely done!!
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How did you get the cupcakes to dome? I keep coming up with almost flat top cupcups = (
Any suggestions would be most helpful! Thanks.
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Actually I did too. I don’t know how to make cupcakes have rounded tops. I toyed with adding a little more baking powder and filling them a little fuller, and only greasing the bottoms, but I’m not exactly Ree Drummond. So I just bought muffins that already had well rounded tops. You might also check your altitude.
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Seriously?! You bought muffins and dunked them in one of the most disgusting substances known to man, didn’t even colour them like the actual Mario shrooms, and were proud enough of this to put this on the internet? Anyone who supports this abomination against the culinary and gaming gods should be lined up and shot.
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They were good, they were cute, and I dare say you can’t do any better. 🙂
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