Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!!
Hope everyone had a nice holiday season. Here are some cupcakes I made for the holidays. I used my coconut cupcake recipe for the polar bears and the snowmen. The smaller ones that have holly on them are chocolate cupcakes (the recipe that has a cup of coffee in them!).
The real fun was in the decorating! To make the polar bears I used a large marshmallow for the head. I dipped it in frosting (my homemade buttercream icing) and then rolled them in coconut. The paws are made from white spice drops. I colored some frosting black (just a mix of red, blue and green) and piped on paw marks and the faces - eyes, nose and mouth. The snout and ears are just blobs of frosting covered in more coconut. They were a hit! Don't forget to sprinkle coconut on the actual cupcake which ends up being the body of the polar bear:
Next were the snowmen - at first I tried making a tall snowman:
He ended up being too tall and way too much time to make. I ended up with more of a 'melting' snowman. I put a large marshmallow in the microwave for 10 secs or so. You want to make sure it blows up a little bit and then when you take it out of the microwave it starts to settle back into shape - but much more soft. I frosted the cupcake with my white buttercream and then pushed the microwaved marshmallow into the frosting. I made some green icing and piped that around the neck for a scarf (I used a leaf tip). The buttons, eyes and mouth are using the same black icing I colored for the polar bear. The nose is a small piece of an orange spice drop, the arms are pretzel sticks and the hat is a oreo cookie! It ended up looking like a french snowman with the oreo hat - but still very cute. So cute in fact that no one wanted to eat them!!
The other ones you see in the picture above are using a red spice drop and just green leaves making it look like holly. Then I used two mini candy canes for the others and just piped on a frosting bow.
Wishing you all a safe and happy holiday season! More to come in 2012!
