Shark Week Cupcakes are easy to make, fun to eat and the perfect sweet treat to sink your teeth into. Homemade orange cupcakes filled with a bite of raspberry orange sauce, these Shark Week Cupcakes are great for viewing parties, days at the beach or watching your favorite shark show on TV.

Two word… SHARK WEEK!!! If you just smiled when you read that and did a little weird happy dance, YOU are my people!! Discovery Shark Week is the binge-watching TV week of the year that I look forward to like no other. As a little girl, I watched the movie Jaws 2 at the age of nine (don’t judge.. the ’80s were much more relaxed) and would pull my feet up every time I went into the deep end of my swimming pool for YEARS! I just new that a Great White Shark larger than a fishing vessel was somehow hiding at the bottom of the pool and I was eventually going to be it’s latest victim. As I got older and thanks to Shark Week, I look at sharks with a whole new understaning. Sharks are amazing and terrifying and misunderstood and phenomenal all at the same time and as I plan for my week of TV addiction, what better way to celebrate sharks than with these easy Shark Week Cupcakes?

You think I’m joking when I say I am glued to my TV? I go to work, come home, throw some form of nurishment at my husband, grab up that TV remote and plant myself on the Discovery channel until way past my bedtime. I even have a shark snack bowl for chips and pretzels but when you are watching hours and hours of shark shows, you need something sweet too. That’s why I just had to make these little Shark Week Cupcakes. These are easy homemade orange cupcakes with a bit of rasberry orange sauce in the middle so when you bite into them, you get a burst of tangy flavor and … well… they look cool!

SHARK CUPCAKE SHARK FINS?

I have seen other Shark Week cupcakes where they show you how to make homemade shark fins out of white chocolate or sandwich cookies. Those are all amazing ways to replicate shark fins on your shark attack cupcakes but I will be honest, I just really liked these shark fin cake picks I found on Amazon. You can certainly make your Shark Week cupcakes with any kind of shark fin you want so be sure to plan what works best for you.

HOW TO TRIPLE COLOR FROST CUPCAKES?

So about the frosting on these cupcakes….? First, let me say that I normally can’t frost cupcakes worth a crap. Seriously, the running joke in my house is that a four year old can frost better than this ‘food blogger’!! So when I brought one of these little shark attack cupcakes to my hubby, even HE was impressed. To get this tri-colored frosting effect, I purchased a Two-Color Frosting Bag kit from Michael’s Crafts. It has frosting bags that have two sides so you can fill the sides up with your different frosting colors and then they secure to the frosting tip with a coupler. I cheated and added two colors (blue and purple) to one side and the white to the other and then using a star tip, pushed out a bit of frosting and pulled straight up. Super easy to do and I think the wave look helps complete the Shark Week Cupcakes perfectly. If that didnt work, I was just going to grab my butter knife and my frosting and frost them that way and call it a day 🙂

PRO TIPS FOR SHARK CUPCAKES

Don’t overmix your cupcakes and use room temperature ingredients. Eggs, milk, butter and sour cream should all be room temperature before incorporating them into your cupcake batter.
It is perfectly fine to use store bought products for these cupcakes. If you have a white cake mix and some white frosting in your pantry, go for it! These are easy and fun to make and if you don’t need to go to the store, all the better.
I have made these orange cupcakes using fresh oranges and have also tried just using orange extract. Fresh oranges win hands down so if you can, grab some oranges from your produce department so really give these homemade shark cupcakes a great flavor.
Don’t forget to fill your cupcakes before you start frosting them …. #guilty
If you notice that your wave peaks are drooping a bit, you probably need to let your frosting sit for a few minutes in your freezer. The heat from your hands will make your frosting warm up a bit and make it harder to stay firm.
If you do not have a two-color frosting bag, you can add all three colors to a large zip top bag or a regular frosting bag and you will still get the three color effect. You can also leave out the purple and just do white and blue.

HOW DO YOU MAKE SHARK WEEK CUPCAKES?

Easy! To make these Shark Week Cupcakes, start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees and lining your muffin tins with cupcake liners. Then add flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a large bowl and whisk the ingredients together before setting it aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream room temperature butter for about 1 minute until creamy. Then add in the sugar and beat for 2 minutes.

Add in the egg whites, vanilla, sour cream fresh orange juice and zest and once incorporated, slowly mix in the dry ingredients until just mixed. Stir in the milk and then fill your cupcake liners 2/3 of the way full.

Add a few small drops of blue gel food coloring and using a knife (or chopstick!) and lightly swirl the blue food coloring to create swirls and ribbons of blue.

Bake for 19-21 minutes then remove to a baking rack to cool. Once cooled completely, make your raspberry orange sauce. Add rasberry preserves to a bowl and squeeze in 1-2 tablespoons of fresh orange juice. Stir to combine, breaking up and large dollops of preserves. Sauce should fall of a spoon in sheets, not clumps.

Then, take a knife and cut out a small cone in the top of each cupcake.

Using a spoon, fill your cone about 3/4 full with your raspberry orange sauce, careful not to overfil.

Then lightly push your cone back on top of your cupcake.

Next, make your homemade cream cheese frosting. Start by creaming your butter and cream cheese in a large mixing bowl. Add in sifted powdered sugar and vanilla extract. Beat until smooth and creamy. Then separate the frosting into three bowl. Mix blue gel food coloring to the frosting in one bowl and purple with blue to another. Leave the third bowl of frosting white. Add your frosting to a two-color frosting bag with the blue and purple to one side and the white to the other and then using a star tip, push out a bit of frosting and pull straight up to create ‘waves’.

Enjoy!!