The Making of Mayor Burchett's Krystal's Cupcakes!

It's Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett's birthday this weekend and my husband wanted to be sure Tim had some homemade treats this year. Late last night, he asked me if I could whip up some cup cakes. I decided that in honor of Mayor Burchett's love of Krystal's, I would use that as my theme.

I remembered seeing a tutorial for hamburger shaped cupcakes on Bakerella's blog. She baked a plain cupcake, cut it in half and added a brownie for the burger and icing for the fixings. They look just like mini hamburgers, but not exactly like a Krystal's hamburger.

Krystal's burgers are small, so the cupcake size is pretty accurate, but they are SQUARE. Also the burger part is REALLY THIN. I needed to solve both of these problems to create a convincing gift.

To make a square cupcake, I started with a round aluminum foil cupcake liner. I folded in the top and the bottom and created a creased edge.

Then I used the corner of a baking pan to smooth the corners into the correct angle. I lined them up on the pan do that each rectangle cake edge could support the one next to it.

I filled them with white came batter and baked according to the directions. I turned the oven to broil at the end to get a gwen brown top to the "bun".

Now came the fun part, decorating the burgers. I colored white frosting to look like mustard. I also bought sour patch watermelon candies for pickles and no bake chocolate oatmeal cookies for the thin burger.

The no bake cookies were flexible enough to flattened but mushy enough to stay together. Plus the oats really looked like meat chunks! I used one no bake cookie to make each burger patty. The burger on the left shows the original shape of the cookie. The one on the right has been flattened.

I ended up being disappointed with the watermelon candies. Krystal's have pickles and the way the candy was pictured, with a green edge and a red center, I thought they would work great. (only the round edge was going to show so the red part would be hidden on the inside of the cupcake.)

What I found inside the package was more of a watercolor effect of mixed up red and green. I was able to cut a few green pieces off and just didn't put a pickle on every cake. Then I just added the frosting and the top half and the cakes were finished.

I asked PJ to go by Krystal's for real hamburgers for lunch and to ask them for a few unused burger boxes.

I arranged a platter of Krystal's cupcakes and had them at Mayor Burchett's office before he returned from lunch!

Happy Birthday Tim!