These little fella’s are super easy to make and are pretty damn tasty too (if I do say so myself).
What you need:
For approx 18 cupcakes
250g unsalted butter or margarine
250g caster sugar
350g self raising flour
6 medium eggs
1 tsp baking powder
2 tablespoons mixed spice (or however much you like, I personally like a lot of spice!)
For the icing/decorating:
300g unsalted butter or margarine
600g icing sugar
White marshmallows
+ a black icing pen and some carrot decorations (or orange pen will work just fine!)
For the cakes
First of all, preheat your oven to 200 degrees celsius.
Cream the butter and sugar until it is light and fluffy. You want to make sure that the mixture is completely blended and that it doesn’t have a very sugary texture.
Add in the eggs and some flour a little bit at a time, while blending in a food processor or by hand. This gets more air in the mixture and just generally makes the batter a lot better! Also add in that teaspoon of baking powder.
Once you have a creamy, fully blended batter add in your mixed spice. You can of course skip this step if you just want normal cupcakes or add in some vanilla essence instead. But if you like festive spiced things then I’d recommend adding in quite a lot of spice – until the mixture goes a light brown colour. Otherwise it doesn’t really come across once they’re baked!
I put around 2 heaped teaspoons of mixture in each case at first then just went over each of them with the mixture that was left over. Then just pop them in the middle of your pre-heated oven for 20 mins and they should come out golden-brown!
Little tip – if you want to check if they are fully cooked, tap the top of one of the cakes lightly. If it feels too squidgy, give them another 5 minutes!
Now for the fun part! For the icing just blend the butter and icing sugar (as per recipe above) in a large bowl. I’d recommend using a food processor or hand whisk for this part because it is a bit difficult to do by hand!
Once you have your butter cream just smooth it onto the cupcake with a knife so that it is even(ish) all the way round, but don’t worry about it too much as it is supposed to look like snow!
Place your little marshmallow head on the top of the cake…
…and stick on your carrot nose! I bought some carrot decorations from Tesco and cut them up with scissors to make them a better fit for the little marshmallow. If you can’t find them, just use an icing pen or get creative!
(Excuse my terrible nails – gel nail disaster that can’t be fixed until this week!)
Next, get your icing pen and give your little snowman some eyes and a mouth.
Then give him some twig arms! I kind of messed up these ones, so they aren’t exactly pinterest-worthy. But oh well, it’s all about the fun with baking isn’t it?
Finish off by giving your guy some buttons and you’re all set..
Isn’t he cute?! You could get creative and add more features if you want to – like a top hat, scarves or anything you want really!
So I’m not sure I’d make star baker on the Great British Bake Off for my decoration skills, but I think these have turned out quite well! These would be great to make with kids as well because they are so simple to make and everything you need you can normally find in most supermarkets.
If anyone does try these out, let me know! Also, sorry for the blog absence recently as I got back home for Christmas last week and in all seriousness I just needed a break from my laptop and any kind of work! But it’s been amazing being back with my family and Max – it’s all going by so quickly.
Hopefully I’ll get up another post before the big day, but if I don’t, I hope all you lovely people who read this little blog of mine have a wonderful Christmas x
