Christmas Tree Cupcakes

You didn't think I would do all this Christmas baking and not do cupcakes, did you? Shame on you if you did! These Christmas tree cupcakes were the first thing I decided to make when I was planning my Christmas baking schedule. If this crazy year of blogging has taught me anything, cutely decorated cupcakes are an easy way to bring a smile to almost anyone's face. I can pretty much bake cupcakes with my eyes closed nowadays, when I'm making them I just go into auto-pilot. Which is good, since it means I have more energy leftover to decorate my cupcakes. In the beginning I would be so stressed from the baking part alone that I would be completely over it by the time it came to decorate them, and would just slop some icing on top.

These little Christmas tree cupcakes are chocolate cakes topped with peppermint icing. Don't be scared by the massive heap of icing on top, these are just mini cupcakes, the same ones that I used to make my ice cream cone cupcakes, so the photos make them look a lot bigger than they actually are. I love using Nigella's choc cake recipe since it is so easy and guarantees a super moist chocolatey cake. The mint buttercream turned out a slightly more lurid green than I expected, but I couldn't bring myself to add any more food colouring to make it darker. It's not too rich though, just a little morsel to decorate a table (and to snack on later!)

I made these mini Christmas tree cupcakes for Asian Gaga. I originally promised to bake her a ton of my chocolate peppermint creams for Christmas, but when I finally came to do it, I got completely sidetracked by this idea for cupcakes. Anyway I think it's more special :) And chocolate & peppermint is always a fabulous combination in my opinion. I know there are some people out there who don't like it, so you could change the icing to pandan flavoured (switching the peppermint essence for pandan essence) and the cake could be changed to coconut flavour (using this recipe).

I loved using the cachous for decorating, don't you think they look just like Christmas tree baubles? They're a little hard on the teeth, so if you prefer you could replace them with the usual colourful sprinkles. I topped each of them with a little white sugar heart, but I wish I could have gotten something star shaped instead!

Christmas Tree Cupcakes
(cake recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake)
100g plain flour
100g caster sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarb soda
20g Dutch process cocoa powder
85g unsalted butter, softened
75g sour cream
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

125g unsalted butter, softened slightly
2 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp peppermint essence
Green food colouring
Silver/Multi-colour cachour and/or other sprinkles for decorating

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Place flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb soda, cocoa, butter, egg, vanilla and sour cream into a food processor and pulse until all the ingredients come together and you have a smooth, thick batter. Spoon the batter into a lined mini muffin tray (about 3/4 full) and bake for about 10 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean and the cake springs back slightly under your finger when you press it gently. Remove from the tray and cool completely on a wire rack.

When cakes are cool, beat butter at high speed with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Sift icing sugar into bowl, add peppermint essence and green food colouring. Add the green colouring as you fold everything together using a spatula, so that you can adjust the shade of green. I think I ended up adding about 1/4 tsp of colouring. Add more icing sugar if you think the icing is not stiff enough.

Pipe icing in a spiral to make it look like the tops of Christmas trees (hopefully with slightly more skill than me...mine were a bit wonky).

Decorate the 'trees' with your cachous and sugar sprinkles, or whatever you want! Leave out to set for about 30 mins, and then serve dusted with icing sugar or store in an airtight container.

Makes about 24 little Christmas tree cupcakes.

I brought some of these into work today, though they got a bit bashed up on the train trip here. Don't ask me why, but we have a stash of those plastic googly eyes at work, so I couldn't resist giving one of my trees a little bit of extra personality. Don't worry I didn't let anyone accidently eat the eyes!

Hello Mr. Tree!