- Today I'm gonna show you how to make this super easy,
delicious and ultra festive Christmas Tree cupcake.
It's a moist and fluffy chocolate cupcake on the bottom
with an inverted ice cream cone covered in buttercream
and filled with candy on top.
Super delicious, really quick.
Let's get started.
I'm gonna get a cup and a half of all-purpose flour
into a sifter,
over a bowl,
over a kitchen scale.
I wanna make sure all my measurements are exact
and a kitchen scale is the easiest way to do that.
Everyone in Europe will agree with me (laughs).
All right in you go.
1 teaspoon of baking soda.
(clinking bowls)
Sticky.
Half a teaspoon of Kosher salt.
Half a cup of a nice cocoa powder.
Try not to skip on this part
because this is the main flavor of the cake.
So go ahead and use something
that is it gonna be really rich
and kind of fresh too.
cocoa powder doesn't last forever people.
And we are not gonna forget one and 1/3 of granulated sugar.
I'm gonna give some nice sift.
The cocoa powder can get kind of lumpy
and you don't wanna have any of that
like clumps of salt or leveling agent
hanging out in any place.
Look at those lumps.
And the real stubborn ones just leave behind.
Right, give us a quick whisk.
Get everything nice and distributed.
There we go.
Set aside and now it's time for the wet ingredients.
I know sugar is a wet ingredient.
It went to the the dries anyways.
You gonna deal with it, okay.
Half of cup of butter milk
and if you don't have butter milk is kind of annoying
because butter milk goes bad very quickly
and you never use the entire giant container of it.
I've been there,
so I understand.
Go ahead and use whole milk.
You can add in like a table spoon
of either lemon juice or vinegar,
that acid will make some magic happen.
One quarter cup of sour cream
and I know that sour cream is only a thing in America,
and nobody else uses sour cream
so go ahead and use regular yogurt,
If you don't have it.
And if you don't have yogurt
you can just use a 1/4 cup extra of that butter milk
and it'll be fine, trust me.
Kind of optional
but I'm adding in two teaspoons of vanilla extract.
Might almost get lost in there
but it's a little of settle flavor you can feel.
And now a 1/4 cup of strong, warm or hot coffee.
If you hate coffee go ahead and use some water,
it's fine I've done that before.
And if you are worry about kids
and caffeine, which I totally get, use decaf.
Last we have two medium, medium large eggs.
Crack them, put them in there.
No shells please.
All right, give it a whisk.
I'm trying to be neat
because I get a lot of comments about the squashing
and splashing that happens on my kitchen so
neatly stir,
nothing going around anywhere.
Set it aside carefully
it's not gonna slide off the island.
We are gonna combine our wet and our dry in a stand mixer,
fitted with a paddle attachment,
and yes, I have a new stand mixer.
It's my little baby.
It's misty blue
and I'm a little bit obsessed.
Copper is life.
Okay, let's get to mixing.
Add those dry ingredients into the standing mixer.
Now we are gonna pour the wet ingredients in too.
It's a really easy recipe.
It's kind of foolproof,
and just to make everybody happy,
I will
be using this guard.
I actually have three or four of them.
People were like, why don't you have a guard?
I have them.
I'm using them for you.
Let see how it works.
(motor mixer sound)
There's no puff anyways,
It would of been fine, see.
Increase the speed.
Let's scrape the bowl down.
If you ever don't wanna follow along exactly with a recipe,
go ahead and just go preppykitchen.com
All the recipes are there in full.
YouTube videos are inside there as well,
So you can watch the video while you are looking a recipe.
Go ahead and back to mixing.
(loud motor sound)
All done, let's take a look.
It's a very thin batter
but it's gonna be an amazing fluffy cupcake.
You're gonna be shocked.
Okay, batter is done.
Time to put some cupcake papers
into our cupcake tin
and then we are gonna be spooning in that mixture.
I actually go back from vacation
and I took tons of my stuff with me because I was like,
I'll be shooting every day.
Basically, I didn't shoot at all and now,
I left all the stuff.
I forgot to bring it over.
So I don't have my big ice cream scoop.
I have my tiny one
and I need two scoops of this.
This is gonna be one and a half,
I guess table spoons.
So you'll need about three table spoons.
In you go.
This will really fluff up so
don't overfill.
If you do that,
it'll be come like a chocolate lake on top
and yes, that did happened to me.
So be careful.
These are gonna go into the oven at 350
for about 12 to 15 minutes.
They'll be nice and springy,
very fluffy to the touch but
not foamy.
If you take them out you hear popping
not done yet.
So into the oven, 350.
For that buttercream I'm using one pound of unsalted butter
at room temperature.
Plop it in and then we're gonna be adding in
our paddle attachment,
cream it up.
So it's kind of nice and fluffy
and then we'll start adding in our sugar.
And yes, there is a lot of sugar.
But It's because of the decorations scheme I tell you.
(motor mixer sound)
Let it do its thing for a while,
it'll be a minute.
(motor mixer sound)
While it's mixing,
add in a half of teaspoon of Kosher salt.
(motor mixer sound)
Okay, so now it's nice and fluffy.
Well, no fluffy as much as really smooth and creamy.
We are gonna take our bowl off.
Set it to the side
and begging sifting some powder sugar.
I'm gonna say about two pounds of powder sugar.
You could use less,
it's really about the consistency and
your desire sweetness, okay.
Don't put all the sugar in at once.
Give it a sift.
You don't have to sift the powder sugar
but it will get little lumps
and if you are using certain piping tips then
it will be clogging them
and you'll be sad
cause buttercream won't be usable for decorations.
There is no way of fix it, I'm sorry.
See, I see all these lumps in here, not cool.
This by the way,
is how I'm gonna make the snow effect happen
at the very end of these cupcakes situation.
Back on here.
Guard is on.
Let's give it a mix.
(motor mixer sound)
I mean, it's working on this side
I'm cover on powder sugar
so that should tell, I don't know.
Right now you can also add in about a table spoon
of creamer milk.
Okay, that's incorporated.
Let's add in some more sugar.
Repeat, repeat, repeat until we have a consistency
and taste we are happy with.
Back on and you know, mix, mix, mix.
(motor mixed sound)
Right now, I'm adding in a teaspoon of vanilla.
Scrape the bowl down.
(motor mixer sound)
Looks pretty good.
We are gonna reserve a cup
or maybe two cups for the bottom of the cupcakes.
Nice snowy situation happening.
The rest we are gonna dye green for our trees.
It'll be very fun, really easy.
Let's get this divided.
I'm reserving cup or so of this
for our bottom part of the cupcakes
where is gonna be like a white backdrop.
The rest of this is gonna get a drop or 12 or 17,000 of
green food coloring until we have a nice dark green.
And when you are dying things green go ahead
and add a little bit of black
to make it look more realistic.
That is a good tip.
Okay, green is not the easiest color to get super saturated
so there will be a fair amount going in here.
I actually just realized that
I ran out of my gel food coloring which is my favorite
so I'm using some regular
supermarket food coloring.
It'll be fine but we have to add a little bit more in so
just one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight
keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.
I also have some of this oil based food coloring
which we're suppose to use for making beautiful bonbon.
So you can use this for cocoa butter
and won't make everything cease
but you can also use in buttercream so
in you go.
Okay, and then just a drop of black.
So like an actual drop.
That's all you need.
(motor mixer sound)
Don't splatter on me.
(motor mixer sound)
Let see where we're at.
I'm cover in food coloring but that's okay.
All right, this is a little bright.
A little more black,
and then, if you wanna adjust the colors
you can add some blue in,
you know be an artist.
(motor mixer sound)
All right.
Many bottles of food coloring later.
It's basically where I want it to be.
It does darken up.
When it like dries,
as it's expose to the air the color comes out more.
Don't go crazy but just being real.
I didn't have that gel food coloring
and the other stuff isn't really strong.
So I was like bottle, bottle, bottle, bottle, bottle, okay.
Into a piping bag,
feed it with a close to start tip please
and we can get started.
I just snip the tip of a piping bag
and we are gonna
just really rustically pipe white buttercream
on there.
Get a nice base
and if you want to,
you can even like mess it up a bit to make it look
more like a wintery scene.
This looks horrible now
but It'll look great with powder sugar all over it.
You gotta trust me here.
Now for our Christmas tree,
what is he using?
A sugar cone
I'm just gonna give a really thin coat first of all,
and yes, this will get messy
so you could use gloves If you want.
Just coat the surface here
because even though we're gonna be pipping
buttercream little branches all over the place,
there probably will be gaps
and you just want to fill it in
so it doesn't looks
like there's a ice cream cone underneath.
You want to look nice and natural.
I'm trying my best to not have
completely green, Grinch hands
from all the buttercream
but it's not gonna be easy.
You could just put an empty cone on top of the cupcake
but that's not really fun.
So you can also do is fill it with some candy.
I'll be adding some M&Ms,
but you can use whatever brand you like,
this is not a sponsored post.
so let's pop those in,
flip that cupcake on.
There we go
and you can adjust a bit too if you want
but that looks pretty fine to me.
I'm using a small start tip this is 32
but you can use a 30, 31 anything in that range
and we are just gonna pipe little tiny stars all over
and we're almost done.
This part is really fun for kids
because they can just do a repetitive task
and feel successful
without too much guidance from you.
Just piping these stars on.
We're almost done (laughs).
Where are those little elves to help out here?
Okay, all done.
That looks nice.
I think My humble opinion,
that looks pretty Christmasy
but we are gonna add a magic finishing touch
with some more powder sugar.
So let's just give it a little dusting
and you're gonna see it looks like a winter wonderland.
If you don't wanna use like 7,000 pounds
of food coloring to get a green tree,
it could be a white tree like a flocked tree
or you add in some raspberry powder for a pink tree,
which is pretty fashionable I think.
Or you can even use matcha powder
and get a nice pastel green one.
So you have options here.
You don't have to use only chemicals.
All right, so we are gonna it some dusting now.
Just tap, tap, tap.
It looks so nice.
I love it.
Cup.
And that's a cup.
My Christmas tree cupcakes are all done
but let me just show you
this super moist and delicious cupcake first.
I've been snacking all the buttercream,
so I just have hit my limit.
I can't have it anymore
but I could have some more cupcake.
Take a look at this.
Look at this,
oh my gosh!
Super fluffy,
moist and
chocolaty.
No, I don't taste the coffee.
Yes, this is delicious.
Wa! (laughing)
I hope I was able to show you just how easy this was.
It looks really impressive
but there is like no skills involve.
I promise you,
it's actually a very popular recipe on the blog
and I've seen many people make them
and they all looks cute.
Even if it's a little bit asymmetrical here and there.
Don't worry about it.
Just add a little more powder sugar.
Right, thanks so much for watching.
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