Not off the grill: Hamburger cupcakes

After a long holiday weekend spent as it should be -- being outside, cooking outside, and eating outside -- the last thing I want to look at today is a hamburger.

That is, unless the hamburger is made out of sugar and topped with buttercream icing. In that case, please stick the grilling utensils in the dishwasher and bring me a plate full of hamburger cupcakes.

Oh yes, hamburger cupcakes. All the goodness of your favorite, traditional, moist, delicious, portioned-out cake, just made to look like a burger fresh off the Weber. It looks like making them is slightly complicated and requires a good deal of commitment. But look at the photo of the finished product and you'll see how cute, unexpected, and worth it all that work seems.

Sure, it might get irritating squirting frosting to look like mustard on 24 slider-cakes. How often do you get the chance to make one awesomely high-fat food look like another? And since when was iceberg lettuce (or would that be icing-berg lettuce?) so tasty?

Fire up your own hamburger cupcakes in these fifty or so steps for a true summer treat.

[via The Daily What]