Christmas Tree Cupcakes

As you may or may not know, today is Christmas!! I was therefore in charge of dessert for Christmas dinner. I knew I wanted to make something stunning that would really amaze people and would also taste as good as it looked, and of course it had to be festive!! I had seen a couple of recipes and creative ideas on the internet but I finally decided to make these Christmas tree cupcakes that I had seen in various places such as 9GAG and on Pinterest.

 To make the basis of the whole structure, you need to make the cupcakes. The recipe that I used is the fail-safe cupcake recipe I mentioned in a previous blog. Firstly preheat the oven to 180°c/350°F/Gas mark 4. In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar. Then add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition. Then add the vanilla extract and carefully fold in the flour. If it is needed, you can add a couple of tablespoons of milk to the mixture so it reaches a dropping consistency, I usually need to add about 2 tablespoons of milk to reach the right consistency.

Spoon the cupcake mix into cupcake cases until they are about half full, an easy way to do this is to use an ice-cream scoop to drop the desired amount into each cupcake case. Not only is this method cleaner than using 2 spoons or other methods, it also means each cupcake case, has the exact same amount of the mixture in it, giving them a much more uniform appearance once they are cooked, making the presentation of them neater. 

Place the filled cupcake cases into the preheated oven and bake them for about 10-15 minutes, until they have gone golden-brown on top, or when a skewer is inserted into the centre of the cupcakes and comes out clean. Remove the cupcakes from the tin and allow them to cool,

To create the Christmas tree on top of the cupcakes, you will need to get some ready-made icing, I used Betty Crocker for this recipe, and by adding  some green food colouring I made the colour I needed to create the effect of a tree. To make the Christmas tree, I used some wafer cones and trimmed them to the right height as they were quite tall and looked out of proportion to my cupcakes. Once I had trimmed them, I placed a wafer on top of each cupcake and then it was time to ice them. 

Firstly I piped a ring of plain icing around the cone, just to hide any unwanted bits. Then using a small star nozzle on a piping bag or just a freezer bag with an icing nozzle in it, pipe small 'blobs' of the icing covering the whole wafer! This will give the effect of a Christmas tree because of all the points on the icing and the texture it creates, looking similar to tree branches and leaves. To add to the Christmas tree effect, you can use edible silver balls, or in this case, I decorated them with hundreds and thousands sprinkles, to make it seem like the tree had been decorated with baubles etc.

       

Ingredients:

For the Cupcakes:  

110g (4 ounces) Butter/Margarine, softened

110g (4 ounces) Caster sugar

2 Eggs

1 teaspoon Vanilla extract

110g (4 ounces) Self-raising flour

1-2 tablespoons Milk

Makes 12 cupcakes

For the Christmas tree topper:

24 Wafer cones - Or one wafer cone per cupcake depending on how many you make (I doubled the cupcake recipe and made 24 cupcakes for the dinner party).

2 tubs of Betty Crocker icing - Or an appropriate amount for how many cupcakes are made.

Hundreds and Thousands: Sprinkles

These were a great hit at the Christmas dinner and everyone was in awe and really impressed by them! They thought they looked amazing and judging by how quickly they disappeared, they enjoyed eating them too!

Keep it sweet!

Aneesa