Monkey & Banana Cupcakes

I celebrated a friend's birthday this week and wanted to bring a fun dessert to the party. (No one is ever too old for birthday cupcakes!!) I hunted all over the internet for inspiration and finally found a cute idea on Pinterest via Raenae. I put my own spin on them by adding the bananas...remember Runts, everyone? The recipe makes 12 cupcakes. Hope you give it a try!

Ingredients:
1 box of cupcake mix (same thing as cake mix but it yields 12 cupcakes instead of the 24...I didn't want a bunch of extras tempting me)
12 cupcake liners
1 can of chocolate frosting (I prefer whipped but you can use whatever you like)
1 box Vanilla wafers (standard size)
1 box Vanilla wafers (mini size)
1 box of Runts
2 tubes of color gel (red & black)

Pay no attention to the tube of yellow color gel in the picture. I was going to try something cute, but it didn't work out so well. :(

Bake the cupcakes according to the package directions.

Cool cupcakes completely, then frost. Try to make frosting as smooth as possible.

Place 2-3 banana-shaped Runts on 6 of the frosted cupcakes. Set aside.

Add a dab of frosting to the back of a standard-sized vanilla wafer and place it on the bottom edge of one of the remaining 6 cupcakes. Repeat with the other 5 cupcakes.

Use a knife to cut 6 mini vanilla wafers in half. (It helps if you use a sawing motion rather than a chopping one. This may take a few tries before you get two clean halves...don't give up!) Using the frosting as glue again, attach two mini wafer halves on the sides of the cupcake like ears. Repeat on the remaining 5 cupcakes. 

Squeeze two nostrils and two eyes with the black color gel onto each of the monkeys.

Add a smile with the red color gel. Feel free to get funky!
Repeat with the remaining monkeys.

The finished product!

Hope you'll give it a try!

Happy Monkey-making!