Reindeer Cupcakes (Rudolp Cupcakes)
These adorable reindeer cupcakes are surprisingly easy to make! All you will need is chocolate cupcakes, chocolate buttercream, pretzels, vanilla wafers, and red M&M'S.
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
Chocolate buttercream:
- 340 g Butter
- 2 cups Powder sugar
- ½ cup Cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
- 1 Pinch of salt
- 150 g Dark chocolate
For the reindeer design:
- 24 Ranch Pretzels
- 12 Red M&M's
- 12 Vanilla wafers
- 24 Eye candy
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 chocolate buttercream frosting:
- Make the chocolate 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 the cocoa powder and carefully mix until combined.
- Add the other half of the powder sugar and mix until smooth.
- Melt dark chocolate or semisweet chocolate and let it cool completely to room temperature.
- Add the melted chocolate to the mixture and mix until well combined and smooth.
How to make reindeer cupcakes design:
- To make a reindeer cupcakes design, you will need simple ingredients: chocolate cupcakes, chocolate buttercream, pretzels, vanilla wafers, and red M&M’S.
- First, you will need to frost the cupcakes with chocolate buttercream (as seen in the video) and smooth out the tops with a spatula.
- Now everything basically comes together fairly quickly for these reindeer cupcakes, you will need to place two pretzels on top of the cupcakes, place the vanilla wafer under the pretzels.
- To place the eye candy and red M&M, I dipped each piece in frosting to help it stick. So stick the eyes in place and the nose.
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: 579kcalCarbohydrates: 81gProtein: 5gFat: 37gSaturated Fat: 20gPolyunsaturated Fat: 5gMonounsaturated Fat: 10gTrans Fat: 1gCholesterol: 89mgSodium: 469mgPotassium: 228mgFiber: 4gSugar: 34gVitamin A: 753IUCalcium: 61mgIron: 3mg
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!