Day 3!

Baking fiesta day 3! I only got to make 1 thing today, but I think it's gorgeous-looking. :) Do you know the book Hello! Cupcake; by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson? There's this cute cupcake decor for Christmas with cupcakes iced and decorated as snowmen and trees. As you should already have guessed, I'm making that today!

If you look on Google, it's actually pretty hard to find a normal, plain vanilla cupcake recipe with no cream or extra pizazz added. It took me a while. Finally, I found one. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients for Cupcakes:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup buttermilk

 

 ****These bake at 350F. Makes 12 regular cupcakes, 24 mini cupcakes.****

The directions are really simple; basic cake method. 

1. Sift together dry ingredients in separate bowl. 

2. Cream the butter with the sugars together. Mix in vanilla and add eggs in one at a time, beating well after each addition.

3. Add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately to the egg mixture, starting with the flour and ending with the flour. 

4. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes for regular cupcakes and 10 minutes for mini cupcakes.

OK, so I didn't have buttermilk on hand. If you don't, just put in about 3/4 of a tablespoon in a measuring cup, then fill it with milk all the way to the 3/4 cup line and let it stand for at least 10 minutes after you mix it.

LOL a bit messy...

For this cupcake project, you need 9 large cupcakes and 7 small cupcakes, or you can adjust the number for the height/amount of trees or snowmen you want to make

CUPCAKES!

Make sure the cupcakes are completely cooled before you start decorating them. Now on to the icing:

I found this most delicious buttercream icing on the internet, from allrecipes.com. Here it is:

Ingredient for Icing

 

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/8 teaspoon salt

4 cups confectioners' sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons milk  

It's really easy: Cream the butter until soft. Add salt and half of sugar gradually, blending after each addition. Then add the egg and vanilla; blend well. It should look like this:

Add remaining sugar, alternately with milk, until of right consistency to spread, beating after each addition until smooth.The final product should look like this:

The final product is a bit yellowish, but it's pretty pale. If you want, you can substitute the egg for two egg whites, or for a stiffer icing, use two egg yolks. The double egg yolks will give it a more definite yellow tinge to it. Now it's time to decorate the cupcakes!

For this you'll just need some coconut and decorative candy, green food coloring and a piping bag with a tip.

Make the snowman first. Here are the cupcakes you need to make the snowmen:

Look at that random iced one

You should have enough to make 2 tall snowmen and one medium snowman. Ice a large cupcake and dip/sprinkle the top with coconut.

Then ice a second large cupcake and dip it in coconut. But this time, put icing on the bottom of it to 'glue' it to the bottom cupcake. Then take a mini cupcake and decorate it's face with sprinkles, candy, gel or something.

Does it look a bit constipated to you?

For the head of the snowman, just 'glue' it on it's side so it looks like a snowman head. Then decorate it. I rolled out some soft candy for the scarf and arms, used icing for the buttons and the chocolate kiss on the top sort of looks like a hat.

C'mon, it looks hatty enough!

Make another one the same as this, then make another one, except take out the middle part for a shorter snowman. Set the snowmen aside. Time for some TREES!

Tint your icing a good shade of green and fill your piping bag with a star-shaped tip.

Just a plastic bag with a plastic tip

BUT the tip is STAR shaped

Now go ahead and 'glue' the trees together. One tall one, 2 medium ones and one baby one. The baby one is just one mini cupcake, so don't worry about that. Make sure you glue them on together first.

 

Now just pipe little star shaped spikes around the edges:

And it should look like this:

Make your other 3 trees, and decorate them if you want. All I did was put a reeses pieces on the top, it looked good enough. Arrange them somewhere, so they look nice.

 Final Product!!

Delicious-looking?

Aw!

Aren't they the cutest things? 

That's all I made today. It took a pretty long time too, and now we're completely out of milk. *Gasp!* I was going to make bread pudding, but the recipe needed 3 cups of milk. :( And I made the bread for it all and everything. Hopefully, I can go shopping tomorrow, last minute xmas shopping too. :P Well, see you!