I Swear I Only Watch for the Commercials

I was a little disappointed by the match up for the big game this year, so I focused on making something delicious instead. I made a few revisions to the chocolate buttercream used for the frosting, and I think it's the best one yet!

Football Cupcake Cake

You will need:
1 box cake mix, any flavor, and any ingredients called for on the box

Chocolate Buttercream
1/2 C butter
1 stick shortening
3 C powdered sugar
2 t chocolate extract
32 oz melted chocolate chips (2 small bags)
1/4 C milk

Make and bake the cupcakes according to instructions. The size of football that I made used 23 cupcakes. Yay! That means there's an extra one for "quality assurance" testing. While the cupcakes are cooling, mix up the best ever, new and improved chocolate buttercream by creaming together the butter and shortening. Slowly add the powdered sugar. At this point, take out about 1 cup of frosting and put it to the side. You'll need this frosting white for the seams and decorations on the ball. In the larger bowl, pour in the slightly cooled (as in, not straight from the stove top) melted chocolate chips. Mix in the chocolate extract. Start with 1/4 C of milk and add until you reach the desired consistency. Also add milk to the reserved frosting that you put to the side until you reach your desired consistency.

To decorate, arrange the unfrosted cupcakes in the general shape of a football first. This is the time to play and move them around until you're happy with the shape. Once you've achieved this, take a knife or spreader and smoosh a little frosting on the bottom of each cupcake to "glue" it into place. This way the cupcakes won't move around which is great if you're going to need to transport it. Now that the cupcakes aren't going anywhere, pipe a healthy (or unhealthy, if you prefer) amount of the chocolate frosting on top of each cupcake using a large circle tip. The more frosting, the better because it's easier to take away from what's there than to evenly add more on. Once all the cupcakes are piped on, use a knife or spreader, or an offset spatula if you have one, to smooth and level out the frosting. Fill another piping bag (or zip-top baggie) with the reserved white frosting. Pipe a thick band across each end of the football as well as a seam across the middle. Add in any well wishes or wording you would like around the seams.

Voila! A football that everyone would rather eat than throw!