Minnie Mouse Cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line 36 cupcake cups with paper liners.

2. Twist 36 cookies apart carefully. Break the side without cream into quarters and place in a bowl; toss in 2 tablespoons flour so that they don't stick together. Place the cookies with cream into the bottoms of each cupcake cup, cream-side-up.

3. Whisk 3 1/3 cups flour, baking powder, and salt together in a separate bowl.

4. Beat butter using an electric mixer with a flex edge attachment in another bowl until creamy and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in sugar, milk, and vanilla extract using a wire attachment. Mix in flour mixture slowly until well blended using the flex edge attachment. Add egg whites and beat for 2 minutes. Fold in quartered cookies.

5. Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling each 3/4 full.

6. Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, about 30 minutes.

7. Mix softened butter and vanilla extract together using an electric mixer in a mixing bowl until completely combined. Add powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time, mixing slowly until incorporated. Increase speed to medium-high and beat, scraping the sides of the bowl often, until frosting appears dry.

8. Dip 2 toothpicks into food coloring twice and mix into frosting. Frost cupcakes as desired and decorate using mini chocolate cookies.

Tips

For the bows, I found ribbon at Michael's and made my own, but only got 24 out of a roll. I ended up buying 12 more pre-made bows at Wal-Mart and they looked much better. I also bought blank barrettes, so a few of the bows could be re-purposed.

Use a decorating bag or zip-top plastic bag and a Wilton 2D decorating tip for frosting.