Snowman Christmas Cupcakes (From Durham Times)
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Snowman Christmas Cupcakes
5:04pm Thursday 29th December 2011 in Eating In
Snowman Christmas Cupcakes
Say goodbye to visions of perfect biscuits and an immaculate kitchen this Christmas. Cookery writer Annabel Karmel says embrace festive chaos and get those kids cooking.
INGREDIENTS
Makes 8-10
100g softened butter or soft margarine
100g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
100g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla essence
Icing sugar for dusting
150g ready to roll white icing
3tbsp apricot jam
For the decoration:
Marshmallows
Red Fizzy Laces for the scarves
Tubes of coloured writing icing (black and red, available in supermarkets)
Sugar balls or silver baubles to decorater decorations
12 cupcake cases
METHOD
PREHEAT the oven to 180C/Gas mark 4. Place the softened butter or margarine, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and vanilla essence into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for a few minutes until the mixture is light in colour and fluffy.
Ask a child to line a bun tin with eight paper cases.
Divide the mixture between them, filling the cases about two-thirds full. Bake for about 20 minutes until the fairy cakes are risen and lightly golden.
Lift the cakes (still in their paper cases) out of the tins and leave them to cool on a wire rack.
Dust a clean work surface with icing sugar and roll out the icing to about 5mm thick. Ask one child to cut out eight circles using a small pastry cutter that’s the same size as the top of your cakes.
Put the apricot jam into a small dish and stir in one tablespoon of hot water. Brush this over the surface of the cakes and stick the circles of icing on top.
To decorate the cakes, give your kids marshmallows for the snowmen’s heads, black writing icing for the eyes, red writing icing for the smiles and sugar baubles for noses (stick them on with a blob of writing icing) and let them create their own character.
Stick the heads on the cakes using a little apricot jam, then stick on the sugar bauble buttons. Wrap Fizzy Laces around the snowmen’s necks for scarves.
Annabel Karmel has launched her first iPhone App which is available in the App Store for £3.99, or for more recipes log on to annabelkarmel.com
