Father’s Day is right around the corner, June 19th to be exact, & this year make Dad something he’ll love! Homemade gifts are always extremely thoughtful as you have to put more time & effort into them. Of course, store bought ones are great & sometimes necessary depending on the occasion but in our experience we’ve noticed there’s nothing a parent loves more than a gift from the heart.

These adorable cupcakes are the perfect gift for Dad: they taste incredible, are super fun to make (maybe even give Dad the gift of baking with you & dedicate a day for you two to create these together!), & mimic one of our favorite summer activities to do with Dad: grill! The full recipe for the chocolate cupcakes as well as step by step tips for decorating them can be found below.

For the cupcake toppers you’ll need: Hot Tamales (to resemble hot dogs), Milk Duds (to resemble steak), & Gummy Bears (to resemble skewers). Additionally, you’ll need toothpicks for the skewers & an edible black market to draw “grill” lines on the hot dogs & steak. For the grills themselves we topped our cupcakes with crushed red sprinkles (simple pour some out onto a cutting board & with the back of a spoon press down onto them until they are crushed) to resemble the fire under the grill. Next, we melted chocolate chips (roughly 1/2 cup) & stirred until smooth. Once smooth, we put them in a Ziploc bag & cut a very tiny hole in one bottom corner of the bag (a piping bag will work too!). From there we used the bag of chocolate as a frosting bag & drew out a circle with lines across it to resemble the grill. Make sure the lines across are connected to the ends of the circle. We placed the parchment paper with chocolate on it in the fridge for 1 hour & then carefully popped them off the paper & topped them on the sprinkled cupcakes. The final step is the draw lines on the steak & hot dogs & cut the gummy bears in half & place them on skewers. Top all of those on your grills & you’re all set!