Christmas Tree Cupcakes
These Christmas tree cupcakes are super easy to make, they are made with chocolate cupcakes, vanilla buttercream or vanilla frosting, shredded coconut, pretzels, green candy melts, and sprinkles!
Ingredients
- 2 Eggs
- 1 cups Granulated sugar
- 1 ½ cups Flour
- 1 ½ teaspoon Baking powder
- 1 teaspoon Baking soda
- ⅓ cups Cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon Kosher salt
- ⅓ cups Vegetable oil
- 1 cups Hot coffee
- 2 teaspoon Vanilla extract
Vanilla buttercream:
- 225 g Butter
- 450 g Powder sugar
- 3-4 tablespoon Milk
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
For the cupcake toppers:
- 250 g Green candy melts
- 12 Pretzel sticks
- 2 tablespoon Christmas sprinkles
- ⅓ cups Shredded coconut (for dipping)
Instructions
For the cupcakes:
- Preheat an oven to 350f (180c) and prep a cupcake pan with liners.
- In a big mixing bowl, add the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and mix with a whisk until well combined.
- Add the hot coffee, oil, vanilla, and eggs. Mix well until combined and smooth.
- Use an ice cream scoop to fill out the cupcake ⅔ full (do not overfill) and bake in a preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Cool the cupcakes for 10 minutes and transfer them into a cooling rack to cool completely (don’t frost warm cupcake).
For the vanilla buttercream frosting:
- Into a large bowl add room temperature butter and mix with a hand mixer or a stand mixer until the butter is light and fluffy.
- Add half of the powder sugar and carefully mix until combined.
- Add the other half of the powder sugar and mix until smooth.
- Add the vanilla extract, salt, and milk, and mix until combined and creamy.
Assembly:
- Frost each chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream and smooth it out with a spatula.
- Dip the cupcakes in shredded coconut to create the look of snow. If you don’t like coconut, skip this step.
- Stick the Christmas tree on the middle of the cupcakes and you’re done!
Notes
Don’t skip the coffee in the chocolate cupcake, you can’t taste the coffee, it simply enhances the chocolate flavor.
Use room temperature ingredients. It is important that you use room-temperature ingredients like eggs and butter. This step ensures that your mixture mixes into a homogenous mixture and bakes perfectly. you don’t want to place cold batter into the oven.
Don’t overmix the batter, you don’t want to develop the gluten in the flour. This step ensures you have moist cupcakes and not dense and dry cupcakes.
Make sure that your butter is at room temperature. An hour or two before making these cupcakes, take the butter out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. The butter should be soft to the touch. If your butter is too cold, it will be harder to mix and there will be lumps of butter in the dough.
Measure your flour correctly! When measuring your flour, avoid scooping it with a measuring cup. Instead, stir the flour with a spoon to create as many air pockets as possible, and spoon it into your measuring cup. Finally, level it with a back of a knife.
Nutrition
Calories: 332kcalCarbohydrates: 68gProtein: 3gFat: 23gSaturated Fat: 11gPolyunsaturated Fat: 4gMonounsaturated Fat: 6gTrans Fat: 1gCholesterol: 68mgSodium: 430mgPotassium: 76mgFiber: 1gSugar: 17gVitamin A: 514IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 49mgIron: 1mg
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!