Mint snowman cupcakes

Mint snowman cupcakes were baked and decorated for purpose of school Winter Fair which took place last weekend. We had great day out. Children prepared lovely Christmas decorations and toys for sale. There were arts and crafts corner, face painting, singing shows ...  There were also a stall with baked goodies and I was happy to participate in that part.  My contribution was small but I was really happy that the snowman cupcakes were quickly gone. If you would like to prepare some yourself here is the recipe.

Ingredients for 8 - 12 cupcakes:

• 125g soft butter
• 125g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 150g flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp mint essence

For snowman:

• 2 pack 500g each of ready to roll icing
• paste food colouring

Preheat the oven to  180C. line muffin tin with paper cases.

Place the butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and mint essence in an electric mixer bowl. Mix the ingredients until smooth. Spoon the batter into prepared earlier muffin tin about 3/4 full. Bake 20 - 25 minutes until skewer interested in the middle comes out clean.

Transfer the cupcakes to the wire rack to cool them down completely.

Dust the worktop with icing sugar. Roll about 300g of ready to roll icing and with circle cookie cutter cut 12 circles. 

Dab small amount of cooled boiled water on the fondant circle and stick it to the top of cupcake. Water will help the fondant to stick to the cake. 

Now it's time to make snowmen heads, scarfs, hats .... .  To add some colour to the fondant just take the desired amount of fondant add small amount of food colouring and knead them together. 

Winter Fair stall

Cupcakes as gifts/parcels

Making those cupcakes is a great fun for long, dark, winter evenings. As baking the cakes is not so complicated and time consuming decorating them takes a lot of time. Recipe for cake comes from here, although I skipped the cocoa. The fondant and frosting were ready to use.

Ingredients for cake baked in 33 x 23 cm baking tin:

• 380g margarine
• 530g sugar
• 6 tbsp milk
• 6 eggs (yolks and whites separately)
• 380g flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp vanilla sugar

Put the margarine, sugar and milk into a big pot and cook the on low heat stirring occasionally until it bubbles. Set aside to cool down.

Preheat the oven to 200C. Grease and sprinkle with semolina or dry breadcrumbs the baking tin.

When the cake mixture is cooled down add the egg yolks, flour, baking powder and with wooden spoon combine them together. In separate bowl whisk the egg whites with pinch of salt until stiff. Gently fold in the egg whites into the cake mixture. Pour the batter into baking tin and bake for 45 minutes.

When the cake is ready, cool it down completely on wire rack. Then cut into approximately  5 by 5 cm squares. Each square slice into half, spread with cream, I used Betty Crocer chocolate fudge frosting, then cover with top like sandwich. Then crumcoated the small cakes with butter cream, I used Bety Crocer vanilla frosting, and covered with fondant. I used Dr. Oetket's ready to roll fondant and Sugarflair gel colourings.    

Chocolate cup cake with fondant

The Academy of Drama where my daughter attends to organized a cup cake sale to rise some founds. I have decided to donate some cupcakes and I baked chocolate cupcakes, decorated them with fondant. And recipe? It belongs to me since I remember, usually I use it to bake big chocolate cake. This time I baked 24 cupcakes out of it.

Ingredients for 24 cup cakes:

• 250g margarine for baking
• 4 tbsp milk
• 4 tbsp baking cocoa
• 1 1/2 mug* of sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 mug* of flour
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• 16 g vanilla sugar

 *take regular coffee mug

Preheat the oven to 200C. Line a muffin tin with paper cases.

In a sauce pan put the margarine, milk, sugar, cocoa powder and bring it to boil stirring all the time. When it is boiled let the mixture to cool down. After some time, when the mixture is room temperature, add the flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar and egg yolks. Give it a good stir. In separate bowl whisk egg whites until stiff (add pinch of salt). Gently fold the egg white foam into the batter. Spoon the batter in paper cases 3/4 full. Bake for 15-20 min. Check with toothpick if baked in the middle. 

When cup cakes are cooled down decorate them with fondant for ideas use your imagination. Fondant and ready to roll icing are available in all colours check shops with baking equipment and groceries.

Here you are a few ideas.

Flowers

Animals

Faces

Presents

Cars