Hamburger Cupcakes!!

I read Serious Eats daily, so last week after following a link from Serious Eats to this Flickr photo set about how to make good looking cheeseburger cupcakes, I had my heart set on these trompe l'oeil burg bites hitting my stomach, like now.

I was planning on making them for a certain event on August 14th, but when he mentioned his love of cheesecakes I decided to bake these little bundles of cheesy joy for my own birthday on the 8th instead. But wait, the 8th was a couple weeks away.. the urgency to try a new recipe set in.. what if they don't turn out? Might as well have a trial run, it could even coincide with my work-friends b-days.. yes.. those are proper excuses for cupcake mania. Let's begin..

Bake Duncan Hines French Vanilla cake in muffin pans as per instructions, helped by loads of butter-PAM spray.
Repeat with Swiss Chocolate extra moist cake.
Slice the little white cupcakes in half, like a hamburger bun.
Repeat with Choco cake.
Add food coloring to Duncan Hines cream cheese frosting (this is a cheeseburger after all). You'll need loads of yellow coloring, and a couple drops of red. I aimed for a Cheez Whiz color instead of the neon American Cheese.
After softening, spread gently over Chocolate cupcake tops.
Add a skinny dribbly line of red icing in a tube.
Start layering and assembling as such, from top to bottom:

White cupcake top
Chocolate cupcake top, frosting side up
Dab of frosting (should be invisible once assembled, just so the layers stick to eachother)
White cupcake bottom.

Once assembled, pastry-brush a few drops of OJ on the top of the cupcakes and sprinkle a few sesame seeds. The seeds won't affect the taste if you're worried.

Four hours later..

I might have been talking about these for a couple days non-stop, but the look on people's faces as they inspected them was unsurpassed. "Who brought in a tray of burgers to the office?" "They look.. so... REAL!"

Clearly I have a thing for burgers, but I never expected these to have such a far-reach. One co-worker took some to her kids, two others to their boyfriends, this dude took some to his friends and some other friends shared one while I took pictures of the ketchup dribbling action.

Taste? Like cake, nothing unusual. The mind-trick took the whole experience to a new level. I've finally found a food that makes everyone as excited and smiley as I get when I talk about food. I've had a perma-smile since, at least half of it caused my the burgers. ;)

The rest of the Food Pourin' shots: