Christmas Cupcakes

My girls had a Christmas party in church last weekend, and I was tasked to make cupcakes for the event. My daughter told her teacher (without asking me first!) that I would make a log cake. I panicked when I found out because I have never made a log cake in my life and was not about to experiment at the risk of not having a cake to deliver on the day. I convinced the girls and the teacher that cupcakes would be easier for kids to eat :p I’ll get round to learning how to make the log cake making next year. 

Next came the frantic search on the web for easy cupcake ideas – a search which yielded these Christmas tree, snowman and ponsiettas cupcakes. I love how these cupcakes bring on the spirit and mood of Christmas. Here’s wishing all of you a Merry Christmas and have a great time with your family and friends!

Christmas Tree Cupcakes

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your branches green delight us!
They are green when summer days are bright,
They are green when winter snow is white.
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your branches green delight us!

This Christmas tree cupcake is made of an ice cream cone sitting on a cupcake. The cone is covered with green frosting piped out using the star-shaped tip. I cut the star on top of the tree out of a gummy sweet and coated it with dessicated coconut.  View Martha Stewart’s video on how to make this cupcake here.

Snowman Cupcakes

 Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul,
With a corncob pipe and a button nose
And two eyes made out of coal.
Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale, they say,
He was made of snow but the children
Know how he came to life one day.
There must have been some magic in that
Old silk hat they found.
For when they placed it on his head
He began to dance around.

The snowman cupcake is made using two pieces of marshmellow cut to size and held together with frosting. I used a piece of gummy for the hat and cut the carrot nose out of the gummy. The eyes are black food colouring painted on using the tip of a paintbrush. View Martha Stewart’s video on how to make snowman cupcakes here.

Poinsietta Cupcakes

The beautiful striking red poinsiettas are a hallmark of the Christmas holiday season. I got the idea of these lovely poinsietta cupcakes from a picture posted by Cake Whiz on her facebook page. The petals are piped using a leaf tip and the green dots using a small round tip. Check out Cake Whiz’spost and video on how to pipe the leaves.

You can use any cupcake and frosting recipe. The frosting needs to be able to hold up well for the piping job not to run. This is my frosting recipe which worked very well, despite the humid weather I have here:

Perfect Cream Cheese Frosting
Recipe from here

Ingredients

2 8-oz. packages cream cheese (light works fine, although it will yield a slightly softer frosting) at almost room temperature
1/2 cup salted butter at almost room temperature
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract

Method

Whip together the cream cheese, butter, and extract until light and fluffy. Add in the powdered sugar and whip until smooth and fully incorporated.  Refrigerate any leftovers (or anything you’ve frosted that doesn’t get eaten immediately).

Angry Birds Birthday Cake

My little boy turned three and we did a little celebration in school with this home-made Angry Birds themed cake. I really felt the stress of baking for an entire childcare centre of 50. Things which could go wrong did go wrong. I baked a red velvet cake but after it was stored in the refrigerator, it ended up tasting funny, likely to be caused by the red colouring? That went into the dustbin and I scrambled at midnight to bake a simple sponge cake. I’m really not the best at frosting and fondant and am just so glad that it did not turn out too badly. Most importantly, he loved it and his friends finished up the entire cake. I was so glad I did something special for him – this is the first time I am making a boy’s theme birthday as I have only been making princess cakes for his two sisters.  There is no recipe to post as this was done using the same sponge cake in my previous rainbow birthday cake posting, so I’ll just let the photos do the talking.

 Where has time gone? My youngest baby is turning 3!

 These fondant Angry Birds require lots of detailed work and patience.

Pigs sitting on wooden structures built out of Loackers biscuits.

Side view of the cake.

Wish I had more space on the cake to do up the entire Angry Birds scene including the bird launcher, but that would mean I’d have to do an even bigger cake. This was the best I could do with the frosting, there is definitely room for improvement.

A basic sponge cake sandwiched with loads of non-diary whipping cream and oreo crumbs. This was the last slice which I managed to photograph just before it went into the tummies of the kids!

Rainbow Cake

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby…

May and June are busy months for me because my two girls’ birthdays are one after another. For the younger one, who is in a childcare centre, I would normally make a cake for her to celebrate with her friends there. She requested a princess castle cake with rainbow colours! This really put all my baking, frosting and fondant skills to the test. For an amateur baking like me, it took me nearly three days to put this cake together. Everything that could possibly go wrong did: the fondant flowers and windows were sweating due to the weather and started to slide off , the castle towers fell off and I could not get the cake frosted as smoothly as I like it to be – which really made me sweat too. Despite all the mishaps, I am just so glad that the whole celebration went well and that she and her friends enjoyed the cake.

The top tier (6 inch) was made using a sponge cake recipe – divide the cake batter into six portions, colour each portion then layer each colour individually before baking. Unfortunately, I can’t post the sponge cake recipe I used as its copyrighted from a baking class, but you can use any sponge cake recipe (like the one below from Baking Mum’s website) that includes sponge gel as that makes the cake more stable. The recipe below makes a 7 inch cake, so if you intend to fill a 6 inch pan, don’t put in all or you will get a very tall cake.

Sponge cake recipe (using sponge gel) – 7 inch cake

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 100 gm cake flour
• 100 gm castor sugar
• 12 gm sponge cake stabiliser
• 25 gm milk
• 90 gm melted butter

Method

• Put all the ingredients except the melted butter into a mixing bowl.
• Beat everything on high for at least 7 mins until ribbon stage. This means that when the batter is dropped back into your bowl, it stays at the top for a while.
• Add in melted butter at this stage and mix in thoroughly.
• Divide the batter into 6 or 7 bowls and colour each with food colouring.
• Layer each colour one by one into the baking tin.
• To achieve the rainbow arch effect, check out this video and see how the layers are poured in one by one.
• Bake at 190 degrees celsius for about 35 to 40 mins or till a stick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Sponge cake recipes without sponge gel is not ideal for this as we need to do extra stiring in of the colouring which may deflate the cake batter.

The bottom tier (8 inch) was made using a butter cake recipe (see below) – Divide the cake batter into six different portions, colour each portion and then bake each portion in individual tins  (or you can use the same tin by baking many times over!).

Rainbow cake (adapted from recipe in Munch Ministry) 

Ingredients (8 inch)

• 330 g flour
• 300 g sugar (I reduced by 10 percent)
• 255g butter
• 2.75 teaspoon baking powder
• 1.5 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 270ml milk
• 3 eggs
• Food Coloring of your choice
• Frosting: Non-dairy whipping cream 500ml for 2 cakes

Method

• Cream sugar and butter till pale and fluffy
• Add one egg at a time
• Add milk and vanilla essence and mix well
• Sift flour and baking powder together
• Add sifted flour and mix well
• Separate batter into 6 bowls (or 7,depending how many layers you want)
• Add a few drops of different coloring to each bowl
• Pour cake batter into different baking tins
• Bake at 180 degree for 10-15 mins each till a toothpick inserted in comes out clean
• Whip the non-diary whipping cream till stiff
• Fill, layer and frost the cake when all the cake are cooled

Note: If you are baking using different tins, you can cool the cake in the individual tins before removing for frosting. If you are cooling the cake on a cooling rack, place a sheet of baking paper on the rack first before you place your cake on it. This cake tends to stick to the rack and will peel slightly if you place it on directly.