number 4 cupcake cake

My aunt always buys these really delicuious and cute cupcake cakes for her granddaughters birthday parties. So since I always make my girls birthday cakes and cupcakes I thought I would give it a try. My daughter recently turned 4 and she wanted to have a candy themed party. So instead of making a cake with candy all over it I decided to make her the #4 out of cupcakes.

SUPPLIES
paper streamers (any color)
double sided tape
big piece of foam board (get at any craft store or WalMart/Target)
cupcake pan
cupcake papers
table or handheld mixer
large bowl
2 cake mixes (any ingred your mix calls for)
frosting (make your own or buy some at the store)

Cut your foam board into the number 4, I did mine by placing my cupcake papers on the board in the shape of a 4 (you will need to do this before you put any batter into the papers)

Now take your paper streamers and tape them to the foam board about 1/2" from the edge gathering them as you go to make it look like they are ruffled. I used lots of tape for this!!

Bake your cupcakes and once they are cooled place them on the number 4. To keep your cupcakes from sliding around while frosting them put a little frosting on the bottom of each cupcake to act like a glue and they will stay put.

this is not finished but this is what it will begin to look like

As soon as you get all the cupcakes on the foam board give them one coat of icing. Let stand a couple hours , I let mine set overnight. Once set go back through and give the cupcakes a second coat to fill in all the gaps that were left showing through after the first coat. It might help to put the frosting on over the gaps with a bag of frosting and pipe it on.

*I had initially planned on using the purple boarder around the edge and pink icing but the icing color I bought tasted awful so I had to go back through and tape a pink edge on top of my purple edge. It looked great!!

this is the finished product. someone stole a cupcake so I was short one one top but it looked great anyway.

Once the 2nd coat of frosting goes on pipe a thick boarder around the top of the cupcake cake. I did my boarder twice to get it extra thick. Then I added sprinkles to the top. Good luck with your pull apart cupcake cake!! This is such a great alternative to a regular birthday cake. Kids love these and they take less time to bake and decorate.

PS I saw one kinda like this on a cupcake website (almost the same # of cupcakes, they had 1 more than I did) for $50- a little out of my budget, I spent $10 to make mine. And mine was WAY cuter, well I think so anyway :)