Like they said on the Mickey Mouse Club, “We’ve got ears; say, ‘Cheers!’” This cupcake has ears—two sets of them actually—and it will make you cheer! While clearly adorable, we honestly didn’t know if we’d like it based on the sheer quantity of food coloring in it alone. We were pleasantly surprised by it though, so we want you to join the club too!
The Mouseketeer Cupcake is a specialty, seasonal offering that is available at the Main Street Bakery (the Starbucks location) in Magic Kingdom. This is one of Disney’s jumbo cupcakes, so it’s priced at the typical jumbo rate of $6.99 or you can purchase it with a Disney Dining Plan snack credit. It is meant to be shared by two (or more) people, but, you’re in Disney, so no judgement if you bogart this one all for yourself.
The cupcake itself is marbled yellow (vanilla) cake and red velvet cake, and it’s topped with vanilla icing that is rimmed with red, white and black Mickey shaped sprinkles. On top of that is a dome of frosting that they dyed jet black with more food coloring than we care to think about. (The dome is really chocolate and vanilla frosting swirled together, but you would never know it unless you were told.) It’s coated in standard black sprinkles, and two chocolate disks were placed into the frosting to serve as the ears of the Mouseketeer hat from the Mickey Mouse Club. It also features an adorable chocolate piece of Mickey’s face on top of a small bit of icing placed on a red fondant disk completing the logo.
We love the idea of going old school with Mickey and Minnie’s Surprise 90th Birthday Celebration by honoring the hat and the Mouseketeers, and the cupcake is clearly picture perfect. The little touches like the rim of tri-colored sprinkles to mimic hair are so thoughtful, and we have a feeling that they put the black sprinkles on the dome to resemble the texture of the original hats. That kind of detail work is what we love in desserts!
What really surprised us though was that this tasted as good as it looks. Well, we should clarify, once we removed the black dome of frosting, this tasted great! While not totally inedible, the black dome had the chemically taste of food coloring which is quite unpleasant. More importantly though, the color was so intense that it left light stains on our teeth! It will also stain any clothing or fabric you touch so be careful, grab extra napkins and have some wipes handy when you eat this. Thankfully, Disney provided the white icing beneath the black dome so that you don’t even need to eat the dome to enjoy the cupcake, and the white icing was delicious. We don’t want to advocate wasting food, but we can give them a little bit of frosting waste in order to create the hat effect that they did. So, get the cupcake, take pictures and, then, just scrape off the black dome before digging into the cake below!
Beneath the mounds frosting, the cake was very moist and flavorful. The red velvet flavor was not too strong as it was muted some by the yellow cake mixed in, but it was the prominent color and flavor in our cupcake. Because of that, the cake was not too sweet even with the very sweet white frosting. Thankfully, we could not taste the dye of the red velvet so that wasn’t a problem for us—as bright as it was.
Overall, this treat is far more than Grammable! It’s certainly eye candy, but it’s also a super moist, delicious, sweet treat for your Magic Kingdom park day. We have a feeling, it’ll make you break into song, “Who’s the leader of the club | That’s made for you and me | M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.”
