How do you know when a bear has gotten into your cupcakes?

Ready?

You find his paw prints in the icing ... womp, womp.

The stale (pun intended) joke is no laughing matter for a Rockaway Township couple who say a large black bear smashed a window of their parked SUV about 2 a.m. Thursday and began munching on two dozen assorted cupcakes.

When they went outside, all they found was smeared icing and a paw print.

Christine Allen said she baked the cupcakes ahead of a big order for her shop, Mo'Pweeze Bakery of Denville.

"Around 2 o'clock (Thursday) morning, the dog started barking and I started hearing a crunch, crunch sound," Allen told NJ Advance Media.

Her husband, Adrian, "looked outside and saw a bear in the yard!" Christine said.

"Mr. Bear could not be reached for comment on which flavor he liked best, he just ate them all," Christine joked on social media.

Lt. Peter Reilly of the Rockaway Township Police Department told The Record the bear may have done "some other damage in the area."

The Allen family believes the bear was on their property several weeks before the cupcake incident and broke down their fence. They took video of that incident.

Reilly said breaking into a car raises concern about the animal "to another level," according to the report.

Every year around this time, New Jersey officials warn people about the dangers of interacting with bears.

"Bears that learn to associate food with people and their homes and living areas, can become nuisance bears that forage in neighborhoods looking for easy sources of food," the state Department of Environmental Protection said in a recent statement.

Last month in North Jersey, a black bear was spotted roaming neighborhoods and sleeping in trees before it was caught in Ridgewood.

Officials with the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife tranquilized the animal, which they later said weighed about 150 pounds.

The bear was taken away - unconscious and unharmed - and was expected to be relocated to a wildlife area in Passaic County, local and state officials said.

Also in April, the black bear in the video below was spotted eating bird seed on a Morris County homeowner's deck.

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook.