To bake tiger striped cupcakes you’ll need two types of cake batter. You can use your favorite chocolate and vanilla cake recipes, or you can use box cake mixes like I did. I used Duncan Hines dark chocolate fudge and Duncan Hines classic white. One box of cake mix can make 12-24 cupcakes, so this is fair warning that you’re going to get a lot of cupcakes from this method.

Mix together 3 eggs, ½ a cup of oil and one cup of water with one box of cake mix in a bowl. In a separate bowl do the same with your second box of cake mix.

In your bowl of chocolate cake mix, add black food coloring to make it nice and dark. This will help your tiger stripes look black instead of brown once the cake is baked.

Now that both cake batter mixes are prepped, spoon the batter into two separate ziploc bags, one bag of black and one bag of orange. Try to squeeze all the air out of your plastic bag before sealing it shut. Cut the tip of the bag off so you can control how much comes out into your cupcake liner.

Alternate a small squeeze of black cake and next a small squeeze of orange cake in each cupcake liner until your cupcake liners are all about ¾ full of cake batter and then bake them for 16-20 minutes at 350 Fahrenheit depending on your cake mix instructions and oven.

Smaller amounts of batter will give you more, smaller stripes. If you pour a large amount in at a time you’ll only end up with one or two stripes.

Make your vanilla buttercream frosting with 1 cup of butter and about 4 cups of icing sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla and 2 tsp of cream or milk. Blend it with a hand mixer or stand mixer for two minutes or until it’s fully blended and no sugar crystals remain.

Once your cupcakes are fully cooled, it’s time to decorate their cute little tiger faces. If you’re still waiting for your cakes to cool, start prepping the chocolate candy melts. I used orange candy melts for the tiger ears. They look a little dull and dusty in the package so you can rub a tiny bit of vegetable oil on your fingers and shine them up before placing them on your cupcakes. Instead of orange candy melts, you can use any other orange candy or orange covered chocolates you’d like. For instance, orange M&M’s work fine, but they’ll be a little smaller than the candy melts you see here.

Put orange icing on top of your tiger striped cupcakes and then dip them lightly onto a plate of orange sanding sugar. The sanding sugar helps give the cupcake a more refined and special look.

Place the orange candy melts for tiger ears and use a few drops of orange icing on the back of the white candy melts to secure the mouth to the top of the cupcake.