How to Make Christmas Cupcakes

Typically cupcakes are simple to make requiring a small amount of ingredients and not a lot of preparation time. It’s when it comes to the decoration that things get a little more complex and time consuming.

In the lead-up to Christmas and the New Year cupcake businesses are being flooded with requests for novelty cupcakes. With cupcakes in the shape of Rudolph and his slightly less famous reindeer counterparts, the majority of which are sculpted from fondant, it is one of the busiest times for any cupcake maker.

These simple tips and ideas for decorating your little creations and making your very own collection of festive treats will hopefully make the whole process a little easier.

When applying fondant to the top of your cupcake it is advisable to first apply a thin layer of buttercream icing (or similar sorts) to act as an adhesive.

The amount of fondant that you apply will depend on the exact design that you are going to be carrying out but generally you want the fondant after it is rolled to be thin enough to manipulate but not so thin as to tear, the best way of working this out is by simple trial and error. Once you have a base you can build up shapes on this in a similar way to making sculptures from play dough!

Alternatively you could pipe some green icing to create a tall Christmas tree. You could even complete it with some little ball bearing decorations and a dusting of edible glitter.

To do this you would need to fill a piping bag with green frosting and then create small points (branches) from the center by squeezing the bag, applying more pressure for a larger dollop. Work your way outwards and upwards making the branches smaller as you reach the peak. Then simply add the decorations!

Another idea would be to ice the cake with regular icing and add white chocolate sprinkles to make your very own, slightly more edible snowballs.

Christmas puddings are another classic design for a novelty cupcake. They are already the right shape, they just need a base coat of brown fondant followed by a layer of white cut into a splurge shape for the cream and topped with some little balls of red fondant surrounded by green leaf shapes to create the holly shape.

New Year Celebrations

To prepare for the new year celebrations there’s the option of creating a non alcoholic treat in a cupcake, why not make a small Champagne bottle from fondant then float it within some frosting as if it were in a bucket of ice and then add ball bearings to look like bubbles. To top it off there’s always room for some glitter and a sprinkling will really add some life to your cake.

Another New Year idea would be to ice a simple cupcake and then add a sparkler to really kick the part off with a bang, of course being very careful when handling them and using specially made ones for indoor use!

Once you've worked hard to create your very own cupcakes then you could make them even more sophisticated by adding cupcake wrapping to the outside of the traditional cupcake cases. There are some very festive designs to choose to make your cakes really stand out.

Cupcakes are great for parties as well as gifts and there is hours of fun to behold in the creation process. And then there’s always the delight of eating them afterwards! Whilst it is better to learn at a cupcake classes or course, I hope that provides you with some information to get started.

I am a big fan of baking but especially cupcakes! I love how they can be decorated in such a wide variety of ways and enjoy sharing my knowledge on this subject.