- Hey bakers, John Kanell from Preppy Kitchen here.
Today we'll be making these super cute
Easter chick cupcakes.
These little guys are never gonna leave the nest.
Sorry.
(laughs)
It's not gonna work out.
All right, let's get started.
We're gonna use one and two thirds cups
of all purpose flour.
One teaspoon of baking powder
and a quarter teaspoon of baking soda.
Quarter teaspoon of salt.
One whole cup of granulated sugar.
You could cut back a little bit,
do two thirds if you want.
Give it a nice, beautiful sift.
And now let's give it a nice whisk.
In the smaller bowl I have
one half of a cup of sour cream.
Half a cup of milk.
One tablespoon of vanilla extract.
Three quarters of a cup or 190 grams of unsalted butter.
Let's whisk this up.
Three egg whites at room temperature.
Just the whites, no yolks.
Whisk it up.
Add some lemon zest into here.
Dump all that mixture out.
And then we're going to whisk it up.
Into cupcake papers, pop them into the oven
and then we're gonna get to our buttercream.
So this buttercream comes together in a snap.
I'm using three quarters of a cup of butter
from two different brands.
Can you tell?
Do you see the difference?
When I get people telling me,
oh my gosh, my buttercream is so yellow.
I think you're using yellow butter.
The bottom one is Kerrygold,
which is a really great brand.
But for buttercream, if you're making white buttercream,
try and use a lighter color butter.
Let's cream this up just a little bit.
Just turn the, let's plug this in.
(laughs)
Glad there wasn't any sugar in there.
Okay.
Well.
This is gonna be a sweeter buttercream,
but for that nest and the grass,
you really want them to be nice and perky and stiff,
so a little bit more sugar.
Don't use any cream in this.
It's gonna be a nice stiff buttercream.
I'm gonna sift this out because I'm using piping tips
that have really tiny openings
and if they clog, I'll be sad.
And I don't wanna be sad
when I'm making a cheerful Easter cupcake.
Sift this out and add it in several batches.
(sings)
I'm trying to make less of a mess today.
And get my exercise in.
It's a shake weight.
I'm gonna add a guard on.
What?
And now let's add the guard on and see how this works out.
It's helping a little bit,
although it's going on me instead of on you.
Keep going with that powdered sugar
and we'll be back when this is all done.
I'm adding in a generous pinch or two of salt.
And a little bit more sugar.
Dump this whole bag in.
The thing is these cupcakes don't actually have
that much frosting on them, so don't get in a panic here.
Does everyone make a mess or is it just me?
You can let me know in the comments.
I don't know if I'm just like
a cloud of sugar dust come to life
or if it's a common thing.
I feel like my mom wouldn't make a mess.
But she also wouldn't judge me for making a mess.
I mean.
(screams)
No.
Little bit of vanilla for flavor.
Splash.
Let's scrape the bowl down to see what's happening.
It's good.
It's nice and stiff, which is what I want,
but the texture is still smooth.
Now I'm gonna divide this into two batches.
One batch is gonna be green.
That's the batch that goes in this little bowl.
With my little rabbit spatula.
It has Peter Rabbit on it.
(upbeat instrumental music)
I'm adding a tablespoon of cocoa powder.
I'm just gonna sift it
so it doesn't have any big cocoa lumps in there.
Let's see how that looks.
It's all about color here.
I'm sorry, I don't really care
about the taste of the chocolate.
I need that chocolate nest to look brown.
That looks better.
Add some vanilla just to thin it out a bit.
(upbeat instrumental music)
That looks good.
We can set this aside and mix up our green batch now.
Just gonna look for the right green and,
oh my God, I'm covered in chocolate.
Let's just add in some green there.
Just a couple drops.
I'm gonna fold it in
and then I'm probably gonna start mixing it.
(upbeat instrumental music)
All right, now we're gonna set this buttercream aside
and work on our little baby chicks.
I'm dying a small batch of fondant up.
Little bit of yellow.
And I'm wearing gloves because this can get messy
and I don't wanna have yellow hands, thank you.
So just add your color in there
and just keep folding it and stretching it.
That's my best advice
to color this up.
There we go.
Tweety bird yellow.
That's what the chicks are gonna be.
You can cover that in plastic and set it aside.
You can make the chicks in advance and in fact,
you should really make the beak part in advance,
so do that the morning you're gonna start
or the night before and just cover it in plastic.
But you have to let them air out
because the beaks need to be a bit dry.
So for the heads, you're gonna measure out
about a teaspoon and if you're gonna use a scale,
that ends up being around three grams.
Roll them out.
Don't be afraid to really get them rolled
because you don't want any wrinkles on the head.
And set them down.
One down, many to go.
Now your chicks eyes can be whatever color you like.
An easy way to do this and a hard way to do this.
I used to do it by taking one sprinkle
(laughs)
on my finger and then putting it onto the bird's head.
But that doesn't work.
So here's what you're gonna do.
Let's sort out some of the dark ones.
So place a dark sprinkle down
and a dark sprinkle of a matching color down
and set them basically as far apart
as you think they should be on the bird's head.
Now, take your clean fingers
that don't have any food coloring on them
and you're gonna press the head into the eyes down here.
And there you go.
Look at that.
Almost done.
Just the beak is left.
That's the easiest way to do it.
Trust an expert.
Look how cute that is.
(laughs)
All right, now for the beak.
So I colored and rolled out this fondant yesterday
and I just covered it in plastic.
After it was sitting out for an hour,
it's dry on one side, wet on the other.
And that's fine.
I'm shocked that it's still so wet.
I hoped it was gonna dry out a bit more,
so really you can make this part a day or two ahead of time
and it's gonna be totally fine.
For the beak, this is so easy, you're gonna be shocked.
You're gonna cut a strip of this fondant out.
So maybe about a quarter of an inch
and then make it a parallelogram.
Maybe a 30 degree angle.
And then you're gonna press it down in middle
with a dull side of a knife.
Fold it over, like that.
(gasps)
What's this?
A little baby beak.
Hey beak.
(laughs)
Oh boy.
Okay, and then just press that into the face there.
You can use the dull side of the knife
once again if you want.
Ah, what's this?
That's a cute little baby bird.
Hey baby bird.
Press the head down into those little tiny eyes.
Now it's all set and ready for the beak.
Add the beak by using a toothpick.
Press slightly and it'll adhere.
Smooth a thin layer of buttercream on top
and now pipe that grass.
I'm using a small grass tip,
but you can use a large grass tip
or 259 like I used for the nest itself.
Piping that nest is so satisfying by the way.
Pop those heads on and you're done.
You can also pipe the grass on with a large tip as well.
It doesn't look at nice, but it's so much faster.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Those were fun to make.
I have been making an assembly line of these though
because I'm actually gonna be on Home & Family tomorrow.
It's a show that's on the Hallmark channel
and I'm making these, they requested them.
So it's been like Easter chick factory in here.
I will not be eating this.
I am taking it to Home & Family tomorrow.
I hope you get to make this recipe.
Super delicious.
But if you like this video,
check out my bunny butt cupcakes.
Very cute, also fondant.
And if you like bunnies but hate fondant,
check out my bunny ear cupcakes.
They have little marshmallow ears,
they're really easy to make
and super delicious and cute.
I'll see you soon.
Bye bye.