Christmas Cupcakes!

So every month my religious group goes and serves food at a Volunteers of America shelter. Last year I made cute little reindeer cupcakes for Christmas and the coordinator asked me to do them again since they were such a hit. But I didn't want to do the same thing again, that's boring, especially in such a creative time as December. So I found three awesome designs on Pinterest and ended up with these beauties as my final result!

I'm going to give a short and to the point rundown with tips on how I made them, but all credit goes to the two websites I'm citing below.

I got the recipe for the hot chocolate cupcakes from this website and I got the Marshmallow buttercream recipe from this website.  

Makes 15 -17 cupcakes.

Now on to the recipe!

Ingredients

For the cupcakes: 

• 1/2 cup Butter (at room temperature)
• 1/4 cup Cocoa 
• 1 1/4 cups of All Purpose Flour
• 1 tsp of Baking Soda
• 1 tsp of Baking Powder
• 2 Eggs
• 1/2 cup Hot Coco 
• 1/4 cup Sugar (preferably baking sugar)
• 1/2 cup Milk 

For the Marshmallow Buttercream: 

• 3/4 cup Unsalted Butter
• 1 Container of Marshmallow Creme (7 oz) 
• 1 cup Powdered Sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract 

Directions

1. The original website doesn't say this but from my experience with cupcakes, mix the butter until it is very, very smooth and then gradually add the sugar. 
2. Add the 2 eggs. 
3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.  
4. Add the Cocoa and the Hot Cocoa and mix until it's all uniform and dark brown. 
5. Add the milk and mix on low first so that it doesn't fly everywhere. 
6. Add the flour gradually and then add the Baking Soda and Baking Powder, make sure the mixture is uniform and typical cupcake batter consistency.
7. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

Take your cupcakes out when they look like this. 

Now onto the buttercream!

1. I couldn't say it any better than the original so here's it is: " beat softened butter with an electric mixer over medium speed until smooth and creamy. Add in marshmallow creme and beat until combined. Finally add in the powdered sugar and vanilla, scraping down the sides of the bowl and mixing until smooth." 

To Decorate!

I had to decorate it with others in another person's house, so this is how I packed them before leaving. Luckily, nothing was damaged.

The Candy Cane

If I had more time to do everything, I would have definitely piped the frosting onto
this design instead of just slapping it on.  

The Snowman

The picture that I used for inspiration for this actually had
something orange as the nose but I already bought the Christmas
m and m's for the Santa so I just went with the green for this. 

Father Christmas!

This dude isn't as easy as he seems at first glance, but it is definitely worth it!
I loved using the peanut m&m's because they gave Santa his classic
big red nose!  

Some Notes

 I tried to add marshmallows to the batter to see how it would turn out and I loved the taste. But I feel like the look of it and the texture weren't what I wanted, so I didn't put marshmallows in the batter I made for Christmas.

I doubled the recipe to get 34 cupcakes and the frosting covered all of it. But it all depends on how much frosting you want. 

The End Result

This is all the food we made for the shelter and we actually ran out of food unfortunately, but it was so nice to see all the grateful faces. 

Hopefully I'll be able to do this for a third year.

Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoy your cupcakes! 

- Raven