Snow Cupcakes

I made these Snow Cupcakes for my daughter’s Frozen birthday party.  She loves cupcakes, so they are always on her party menus… This time, I wanted to make them a little different.  You see, I love making cupcakes because I think they look really beautiful and you can play around with so many flavour and colour combinations so you never get bored!  I must admit though that I am not a huge buttercream fan.  It’s ok, but I find it a bit heavy, so I can never eat more than one mini cupcake.  Besides, a simple vanilla buttercream would not look as white as snow.  So, how to fix this?  I gave these cupcakes an “Italian twist”.  We often use sweetened whipped cream to decorate our cakes… and it worked beautifully.  It was so white, light and fluffy that it really looked like snow on brown soil.  I then made some snowflakes decorations with Royal Icing to add to the top and they looked really cute!  So, what’s your favourite cupcake topping?

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Snow Cupcakes

Snow Cupcakes made with whipped cream "snow" and chocolate "soil".

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: International

Prep Time: 1 hour

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Servings: 24 mini cupcakes

Author: Manuela Zangara

Ingredients

Chocolate Cupcakes

• 188 gms – 1 ½ cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp sea salt
• 115 gms – 4 oz. unsalted butter at room temperature
• 125 gms – 1 cup + 2 tbsp packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs at room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla
• ½ cup buttermilk or yogurt
• 2 tbsp milk
• 3 to 4 tbsp cocoa powder

”Snow” Icing

• 125 gms – 4.4 oz. heavy cream
• 2 tbsp sugar

Snowflake Decorations

• Royal Icing
• Blue food coloring
• Sugar pearls

Instructions

Chocolate Cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 165°C and line muffin trays with papers.
2. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt together in a bowl and set aside.
   
3. Then cream the butter, vanilla and brown sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until well incorporated.  Remember to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
5. Add the flour and cocoa powder mixture in three batches, alternating it with two additions of buttermilk (or yogurt) and milk. Beat until well combined.
   
6. Put the batter into the lined muffin tray cups, filling each to about half.
7. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes (25 minutes if you make bigger cupcakes).
8. When cooked, let them cool down in the tray for 10 minutes, then put them on a wire rack to cool down completely.
   

Snow Icing

1. Whip the cream and sugar until soft peaks are formed.
   
2. Keep it in the fridge until ready to pipe.

Snowflake Decorations

1. You can use a template to pipe your Royal Icing snowflakes, or do them by hand (which is what I did).
2. Mix some blue food colouring to the Royal Icing.
   
3. Pipe out the snowflakes into a piece of baking paper.
4. Add a sugar pearl in the centre of each piped snowflake and let them dry completely. (You can make these a couple of days in advance)
   

To Assemble the cupcakes

1. Put the whipped cream in a piping bag and decorate the chocolate cupcakes with it.
2. Top with the Royal Icing snowflakes.
3. Serve immediately.