Christmas Cupcakes

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!