Need some Christmas cupcake ideas? Well, the festive months are coming! Perfect for some cute projects. Also, with a second nation-wide lockdown (in the U.K.) under way here’s a fun Christmas tutorial round-up to keep you going! From Christmas Puddings to shimmering snowmen there’s bound to be something cute to create!
The first of our Christmas cupcake ideas? This cheeky Christmas Pudding cupcake! You can opt to change the colours around to git in with your party theme. More traditional? Swap the pink berries for red! Why not cut a few steps out and top with a festive pick instead?
This is one super stylish Christmas tree cupcake. Keep it chic and modern for the holiday season and check out our tutorial. You can also decorate the tree with fun festive sprinkles too.
Say hello to our adorable gingerbread character. Click the link to find out how you can re-create this little cutie yourself. We LOVE the golden buttons and rosy cheeks on this fondant topper. Here’s a cute idea… why not flavour the fondant or modelling past beforehand with some cool gingerbread flavouring!
Our sweet little reindeer is perfect for anyone looking for a fun Christmas cupcake tutorial. You can even add different bows or change colours to make it unique. Why not create one for each dinner place setting and add names to cupcake itself?
Finally, one of our latest Christmas cupcake ideas is this fancy snowman. Decked with a dapper top hat and a preened pink moustache he’s ready for party season. For the top of the iced cupcake you can even imprint sweet patterns with these fun rolling pins!
We make ALOTofsupercuteandmagicalunicorncakes&cupcakes. All of them utterly perfect for kids parties or Christenings! This time we were asked to make a more grown-up unicorn cake. Adorned with bubblegum pink macarons, pastel meringues, 24k gold leaf and a more pretty than adorable unicorn. We think this cake added the perfect amount of grown-up magic to the party!
Pretty pastel unicorn cake for a fun birthday party!
The pastel unicorn cake was covered in a silky whitened buttercream in our popular Strawberry Milkshake flavour. We then added a soft lavender ombré effect along the base before adding a mix of fun sprinkles. 24k edible gold leaf was then applied before a blush pink drip edged one side of this cutie!
A box full of matching party cupcakes accompanied this pastel unicorn cake! Some were rose swirls of white buttercream finished with 24k gold, others featured pink chocolate drizzles, sprinkles, pretty roses and pastel meringues!
Cute pastel unicorn cake and cupcakes!
We LOVE drip cakes as they’re usually loaded with so many sweet treats! This pastel dream cake was topped with a flurry of sprinkles (we used ‘Crush’ and ‘Pastel Princess’ both from Shire Bakery), pretty pink macarons, pastel turquoise meringue kisses and pink and lavender roses!
That magical unicorn on top? 100% hand crafted using zero moulds whatsoever. We studied and sketched a few stylised unicorns and horses before experimenting with fondant. In the end it needed to be pretty stable, but the pose couldn’t look static. We decided to have the unicorn stood on an edible cloud to make it durable and have one leg arched up! This also meant that the unicorn could stand a little higher than all the treats on top.
This sure was a fun order to make. What’s not to love right? Unicorn theme! Macarons! Cute colour palette!
Buttercream is one of those things that seems oh so simple until it comes to making it. It’s too easy to mess up and get the balance of ingredients terribly wrong. Too much butter can create a runny mess in the summer and taste a little too savoury. Too much sugar means stiff and gritty buttercream that looks unappealing. For silky smooth frosting follow our top 5 tips for perfect buttercream that’ll make your cakes the cream of the crop!
5 tips for perfect buttercream!
1: Softened butter only!
Make sure to use room temperature / softened butter to make your buttercream. It makes sense. Chilled butter just won’t cream or mix to a lovely silky texture. Room temperature translates at around 20 degrees C (that’s 68 degrees in F) for those of us in a chilly or insanely hot climate. If you live in the Yukon and your actual room temperature is 8 degrees C still aim for 20 degrees C butter!
2: Don’t over whip!
Mixing or whipping your buttercream way too much can mean lots of unsightly bubbles. Not only are these not so nice on an otherwise pretty bakery style cake, but they’re a nightmare when it comes to piping on top of cupcakes. Imagine bagging up all that buttercream and piping all your cupcakes only for those swirls to get messy and interrupted just because of massive air bubbles in the frosting. Tsk. Tsk. Two essential tools for whipping up perfect buttercream that we couldn’t live without are *drumroll*… a KitchenAid Stand-Up Mixer and our Mason Cash spatula!
3: Avoid artificial flavourings!
Not only are artificial flavourings quite icky and chemical in taste (seriously, they’re called artificial so they’re going to taste pretty fake compared to the real deal), but they just don’t help with buttercream texture. You want to use a flavourant that does help cultivate a silky look and feel to your frosting. Extracts are generally oil based which adds a little extra lubricant to your buttercream; perfect for smoothness! Things like vanilla bean paste can really help too as the paste is generally the texture of runny honey; also perfect for adding some smooth factor (plus those tiny flecks of pure vanilla just scream luxury). Essences, if they’re good quality, can also help keep your buttercream silky!
Don’t buy whatever is on offer just to save money. Not only will you not understand the butter you’re working with, but you’ll end up changing brands and being insanely inconsistent all the time. Test lots of butters or buttermilk based spreads (steer clear of low fat as they contain higher ratios of water which is a definite no for buttercream as water takes away stability when means floppy and curdled looking frosting) to find the perfect butter for you.
5: Less sugar!
The last of our 5 tips for perfect buttercream is simple. You can tell bad and overly sweet frosting by just looking at it. It’s stiff as a rock and the edges aren’t smooth they’re ragged. Adding way to much sugar into your buttercream not only makes it sickly sweet and almost inedible it also makes it hard to pipe and just plain ugly. Cut back on your icing sugar. Taste test it too. We generally add in around 1 part icing sugar to 2 parts butter for our silky buttercream. To keep a track on all the ingredients you’re using in your buttercream we’d strongly recommend investing in a good pair of digital scales!
