Taco Bell Birthday Cake Churros Recipe (Milk Bar)

Taco Bell's Milk Bar Birthday Cake Churros were two warm churros filled with birthday cake frosting and topped with pink confetti sprinkles, sold for a limited time from 20 February 2025. This copy fries eight churros from a cup of flour, rolls them in cinnamon sugar, and pipes in a frosting of butter, shortening, cream cheese, vanilla and powdered sugar.

What Taco Bell's Milk Bar Birthday Cake Churros were

Taco Bell and the bakery Milk Bar launched them nationwide on 20 February 2025: warm, crisp churros with Milk Bar's birthday cake frosting inside and bright pink confetti sprinkles on top, at $2.99 for two or $1.99 for one, while supplies lasted. It was the second joint dessert of the two companies, after the Strawberry Bell Truffle of 2022.

They are not on the menu now. On 1 October 2026 Taco Bell's sweets are the Caramel Apple Empanada, Cinnamon Twists and Cinnabon Delights. The recipe here is a reconstruction from the announcement, not Taco Bell's or Milk Bar's formula, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with either company.

Recipe

Taco Bell Milk Bar Birthday Cake Churros

A reconstruction of Taco Bell's Milk Bar Birthday Cake Churros — fried churros rolled in cinnamon sugar, filled with a birthday cake frosting and topped with confetti sprinkles. Eight churros.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

30 min

Cook

20 min

Total

1 hr

Serves

8

Cuisine

Mexican-American

Ingredients

• For the birthday cake frosting:
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
• 1 ounce cream cheese, softened
• 2 teaspoons light corn syrup
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon lemon juice
• 2/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• For the churros:
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 large egg
• 4 cups vegetable oil, for deep-frying
• To finish:
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons pink confetti sprinkles

Instructions

1. Beat the softened butter, the shortening and the cream cheese with a hand mixer for 2 minutes, until smooth and pale. Beat in the corn syrup, vanilla and lemon juice, then the powdered sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and beat 2 minutes more until fluffy. Spoon the frosting into a piping bag fitted with a small round tip and leave it at room temperature.
2. Bring the water, 2 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of salt to a boil in a saucepan. Take the pan off the heat, add the flour all at once and stir until the dough comes together in a smooth ball.
3. Let the dough cool for 5 minutes, then beat in the egg until the dough is smooth and glossy. Transfer it to a piping bag fitted with a large open star tip.
4. Heat the oil in a deep, heavy pot to 360°F. Mix the 1/4 cup of sugar with the cinnamon in a shallow dish.
5. Pipe 6-inch lengths of dough into the oil, cutting each one off with scissors. Fry 3 at a time for 4 to 5 minutes, turning, until deep golden. Drain them on a rack for 1 minute and roll them in the cinnamon sugar.
6. Let the churros cool for 10 minutes. Push a chopstick lengthways through each one to open a channel, and pipe the frosting in from both ends until it shows.
7. Pipe a thin line of frosting along the top of each churro and press the sprinkles onto it.

The birthday cake frosting

Milk Bar's founder, Christina Tosi, has published the frosting of her birthday cake. In Taste of Home's write-up of the recipe it is butter, shortening, cream cheese, corn syrup, vanilla, confectioners' sugar and salt, with a pinch each of baking powder and citric acid.

The filling in the card is that list cut to a quarter. A quarter teaspoon of lemon juice takes the place of the citric acid, and the baking powder is left out.

• Shortening does not firm up the way butter does as the churros cool, so the filling stays soft.
• Corn syrup keeps the frosting smooth and stops the sugar from turning grainy.
• Clear vanilla, if there is some in the cupboard, keeps the frosting white; brown extract tints it ivory.

Doubled, the same frosting covers a single-layer cake such as the soda cake.

Piping and frying the churros

• An open star tip. The ridges let steam out of the dough. Churros piped through a plain round tip can burst in the oil.
• Cool the dough before the egg. Five minutes off the heat is enough; in dough straight from the stove the egg cooks before it is mixed in.
• 360°F. In cooler oil the churros soak up fat; in hotter oil they brown before the middle is cooked. Frying three at a time keeps the temperature from dropping.
• Scissors, dipped in the oil first, cut the dough cleanly at the tip.

Filling them without splitting them

Warm churros melt the frosting, so they cool for ten minutes first. A chopstick pushed through from end to end makes the channel; turning it once widens it. Pipe from one end until the frosting stops moving, then from the other. Each churro takes about a tablespoon and a half.

Baked instead of fried

Pipe the dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 400°F for 18 to 20 minutes, until golden and firm. Brush the churros with melted butter so the cinnamon sugar sticks, then fill them the same way.

Making them ahead

The frosting keeps three days in the refrigerator; let it come to room temperature and beat it again before piping. Unfilled churros crisp up again in five minutes at 350°F. Filled ones are best within two hours.

For a Taco Bell evening, the cheesy dipping burrito and the dirty Baja Blast are on this site too.