I Tried the Viral Bunny Cupcake Hack — Here’s What Happened

In February, I saw everyone turn their cupcakes into hearts. The results are adorable and the process is simple (place a little ball of foil between the cupcake liner and the pan before baking to make an indentation in the cupcake). When I saw Food Network post a video of someone applying the same technique to make bunny cupcakes, all I could think about was how much my 3-year-old would love them. If you know me, you know I’m not a cake person, but I couldn’t not try these. 

I watched a couple of different videos showing the same process. Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners and fill each liner with batter. Next, you’ll place little balls of foil in between the liner and the pan to create indentations. For each bunny, you’ll need three balls of foil: one for the top of the cupcake, one for the top-left side, and one for the top-right side. Bake according to package (or recipe) instructions. Let cool, then remove the foil balls and decorate to your heart’s desire. 

Unfortunately, I only got a few passable bunnies (at least by my toddler’s standards) from my batch. I fully blame myself and do think there’s potential for the trick, but I won’t be trying it again. 

My biggest qualm is how annoying it is to roll the little foil balls — it even kinda hurts? Beyond that, I almost certainly didn’t create the right sized balls. For heart-shaped cupcakes, my colleague Kelli Foster suggests rolling foil into marble-sized balls, but the ones in the Food Network looked smaller to me. Ultimately, I believe mine were too small and had little effectiveness in creating impactful bunny ear indentations. 

But more detrimental to my batch of bunnies was how much I filled the cupcake liners. I picked up a box of Duncan Hines Butter Golden and followed the instructions on the back of the box, beating the batter (made with real butter) for 4 minutes at medium speed. Then I made a classic rookie mistake — not carefully reading through a recipe. I filled the cupcake liners about three-quarters of the way full with batter, totally ignoring that the yield should be 24 cupcakes. I only filled 18 liners, so the vast majority of my cupcakes rose high above the top of the liner, totally overtaking those tedious, tiny balls I took time to roll. 

• Use marble-sized balls of foil. I believe that a bigger piece of foil is necessary to effectively shape the bunny cupcakes as they’re baking. 
• Don’t overfill the liners. I hope nobunny makes the same mistakes as me.