monkey cupcakes

When I first came across Martha Stewart's monkey cupcakes {here}, I deemed it a little hard for me. I danced around the idea for weeks until I randomly spotted this recipe {here}. It appeared extremely doable and though the monkey looks a bit different, I personally thought the latter was cuter. Because monkeys are D's favorite animals, I was determined to make them for our anniversary.

The funniest thing happened as I was making them. I locked myself and my roommate out while the cupcakes were baking. A lot of our friends came by our apartment to attempt to unlock the door, but after two hours, we had to call the locksmith...otherwise, our apartment would have probably burned down. The whole incident was hilarious, but at the same time, it seemed inappropriate to laugh. When we finally got the door unlocked, the apartment smelled of smoke and my cupcakes were completely black and burnt. So, take two...

MONKEY CUPCAKES

Ingredients:
1 box of yellow cake mix (if you want to skip the making of the mixture)
1 can of milk or dark chocolate frosting
1 box of Nilla Wafers
1 box of mini Nilla Wafers
red and black gel icing pens

Directions:
1. follow directions on the cake mix box (or make your own mixture!) and add slices of bananas into the cake mix
2. bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees and let cupcakes cool for 5 minutes before adding chocolate frosting (make sure frosting is flat)
3. break mini wafers in half and use as ears and use 3/4 of the regular wafers as the mouth area
4. use the red gel icing as the smile and black gel icing as the eyes and nostrils (you'll notice in my pictures that I used oreos for the eyes because Safeway didn't sell black gel icing)