Christmas Tree Cupcake {Guest Post}

Today I'm so happy to have Kate Petronis, the amazing cake and fondant designer from And Everything Sweet guest posting with a wonderful holiday treat.... a

CHRISTMAS TREE CUPCAKE 

You are going to love this one! So creative! I'll let Kate show you how......

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Don’t you just love the holiday season!?!?

Every time I turn around there is something special going on, some kind of celebration.

And where there is a celebration there is a need for sweets! 

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 This morning I woke up early to make these cupcakes for my girls’ daily advent calendar surprise. They were easy and WELL received. If you like frosting you’ll love these!!!

Supplies: First, (and you probably already knew this) you need cupcakes. I baked red velvet mini cupcakes b/c I didn’t want to sugar my kids up toooo much, but I think these would be great as big cupcakes as well.

Then you need icing in a pastry bag with a 2A tip. (I used cream cheese icing to compliment the red velvet). You’ll need green candy melts, some mini m&ms, and some yellow Laffy Taffy or yellow Starburst.

Stick the iced cupcake in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes to let the icing really firm up and chill. You’re going to be dunking it into melted candy so you want the icing to be nice and cold so it survives the plunge. This step is important to avoid any icing melting and falling off into the candy melts or losing its shape under the heat of the candy. Trust me, that’s no fun and it might make you say things out of frustration that you’d like to later take back. And no need to have the candy super hot…just warm enough to be melted.

While your cupcakes are chillin’ in the freezer melt your candy melts in a cup or bowl tall enough for dipping. I used a little drink cup since I was dipping mini cupcakes. It worked perfect. I also added a little spoonful of shortening to the melts to make it just a little thinner.

Pull it out…

And.....

Now you can trim the tree! Act quick before the candy completely dries. I used mini m&m's for the ornaments and I heated up a Laffy Taffy in the microwave for a couple of seconds to soften it up so that I could roll out a “snake” to wrap around the tree. The star is also Laffy Taffy (Starburst works as well).

Here’s an inside look…As you can see its about 70% icing, 20% cake and 10% candy. My girls said, “Is it real? Can I eat it??” In their eyes (as icing loving girls) it looked too good to be true!!!!

Check out the size of that bite! That’s what I call goin’ for it!!!!

Hopefully you have a little fun with baking this holiday season. 

 And whatever you do, try to forget about the calories! 

 (that’s what New Years resolutions are for!!!)

Merry Christmas and happy baking!!!!

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Thanks so much, Kate, for your wonderful tutorial. Who knew Christmas Tree cupcakes could be so easy to make, and I have a couple of those "icing girls" myself who would love to take a big ole bite, too!