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

Brownie Burger Cupcakes and Sugar Cookie Fries

I have been following Bakeralla for quite a while now and I always loved this baking project she did. It was just very creative and didn't seem very difficult either as most of the components in this are made using mixes. 

So I finally decided to go for it and try the project for myself! As I thought it was not very difficult to bake everything - however it was very time consuming, but it was all worth it in the end when I saw the look of the final product!!

To start off with I made the dough for the sugar cookies as the dough needed to be refrigerated for at least an hour. I couldn't find the mix for sugar cookies so I used this recipe I found on the Joy of Baking website. It was quite easy and made more than enough dough - so I even had extra dough to make some cookies for myself! 

Once the dough was set, I rolled it out into a rectangle-ish shape and just cut thin strips, about the length of normal fries and placed them slightly spaced out on a baking sheet, since they do spread out a little when cooking. Once they were cooked, I put a bit of caster sugar on top of them so they looked like the "fries" had salt on them, making them look more realistic.

For the next component, the brownie burger, I used my favourite brownie mix - Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Brownies!! Once they were cooked according to the instructions on the box, I just cut out circles to make them look like burgers!

The only thing left to make was the cupcakes! I have a fail safe cupcake recipe I use whenever I need to make vanilla cupcakes, which I will definitely show in a future post. They only took about 10/15 minutes to bake, and I was ready to construct the fast food masterpiece.

To make the coloured icing to look like lettuce and ketchup, I just used some ready-made icing from Betty Crocker and added food colouring to get the right shade. Yellow food colouring could also be used to look like cheese or mustard in the burgers. 

Once the icing is made, just cut the cupcakes in half horizontally and put in the brownie circles. Then pipe a little of the icing on top of the brownie and top it off with the top-half of the cupcake. Then just serve the burgers and fries in the classic fast food looking trays, templates to which I will link at the end. To add an extra touch, you can add some sesame seeds on top of the cupcake buns, by brushing some water on them and sprinkling over the seeds to make them look like real burger buns.

The templates, are the ones linked to on Bakerella with the original recipe and they contain: the tray template, french fry holder (blank & with Happy Faher's Day) and the design for the Happy Father's Day tissue paper, as the original recipe was made for Father's Day. The templates can be downloaded here.

I was extremely happy with the way they turned out and am really glad I finally decided to give it a try! I definitely recommend giving this recipe a go as they are sure to impress anyone you make them for and they were really tasty too! 

Aneesa