Snowman Cupcakes

I think I’ll always be a kid at heart. These snowman cupcakes were so fun to make (and of course so fun to eat)! I think I’m going to have to make them every year now, and I think my kids would totally agree with that.

With these I made chocolate cupcakes and topped them with a buttercream frosting. Basically you can use any cupcake recipe you want, but I would highly recommend using the recipe for vanilla buttercream frosting below, because it is basically the best food ever (to say the least :))! The recipe I have listed below for chocolate cupcakes is deliciously chocolatey and completely irresistible. They are slightly dense, so if you want a fluffy chocolate cupcake you can use this recipe here (just omit the Reese’s stuffed center). Other good cupcake choices would be red velvet, white, yellow, carrot, coconut. Okay nearly any cupcake flavor goes with vanilla frosting, so you get the idea.

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I hope the snowman instructions I’ve written are pretty straight forward for you. I don’t normally post crafty recipes like this but people, I got my craft on and I had a great time doing it. I also loved taking pictures of these in the snow! It’s one of my favorite settings. It doesn’t really fit into food so much. I did it with hot cocoa last year and I was so excited to have something else that would fit into the snow scene this year.

If you’re old, if you’re young, if you don’t like sweets (then your crazy. I’m only kidding :)) then please make these fun little snowmen cupcakes. If you don’t want to make the cupcakes then at least make the snowmen. They’ll make you feel like a kid again. And if you have children, you’ll get the awesome parent of the day award for making them. You’ll see it in the smiles on their faces. Enjoy!

I’m glad I can use my grill for something in the winter. Turned out to be a good prop (and no, those burn marks aren’t from me starting it on fire once upon a time :). I’m still not sure how that happened.

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Snowman Cupcakes

Ingredients

Chocolate Cupcakes
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, diced into 5 pieces
• 2 oz. bittersweet chocolate (60%), chopped
• 3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• Vanilla Buttercream Frosting, recipe here*
• 12 marshmallow snowmen, instructions follow

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add chocolate and butter to a microwave safe bowl and heat in microwave on 50% power, in 30 second intervals, stirring after each interval until melted and smooth. Allow to cool until lukewarm, about 10 minutes.
• In a mixing bowl whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a seperate mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract, about 1 minute. Whisk in melted chocolate mixture. In a liquid measuring cup, measure out buttermilk then whisk in sour cream. Sprinkle 1/3 of the flour mixture evenly over the top of the batter, than whisk to combined. Add 1/2 of the buttermilk mixture and whisk to combined, repeat process once more then end by dusting remaining 1/3 of flour over top and mixing just until combined. Divide batter evenly among 12 paper lined muffin cups and bake in preheated oven 17 - 20 minutes until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool in muffin pan several minutes then transfer to a wire cooling rack. Cool completely then frost with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting and top each cupcake with one marshmallow snowman.
• *Depending on how much frosting you want I'd make 1/2 to 2/3 of the recipe.
• Recipe Source: chocolate cupcakes loosely adapted from Cook's Illustrated. Frosting - Cooking Classy

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Marshmallow Snowman

Yield: 12 Snowmen

Ingredients

• 24 large marshmallows
• 24 pretzel sticks
• Black or brown nonpareil sprinkles or chocolate jimmie sprinkles*
• 12 Reese's chocolate bells
• 2 orange Dots candies**
• Icing

Directions

• Using clean scissors, trim about 1/4 of the bottom from 12 of the marshmallows and compress to make it smaller (to create a smaller top for the head). Depending on the length of pretzel sticks, break them to desired length for the arms (I broke about 1/3 of them off). Trim orange Dot candies into small carrot shape noses using a pairing knife (or scissors).
• To assemble, use icing to stick marshmallows together (trimmed side down). Poke 2 pretzels into sides of bottom marshmallows for arms. Use toothpicks to create tiny wells for the eyes and the buttons (mostly to expose the the stickiness of the marshmallow) then add 2 sprinkles for the eyes and 3 for the buttons. Using toothpick, poke a small hole in marshmallow for the nose and gently press orange (Dot) nose into hole. Dot bottom of Reese's candy with icing and place on top of snowman.
• *If using the chocolate sprinkles (the long sprinkles) cut them into smaller pieces
• **If you want to add flowers too, I used the red Dots and used scissors to slice them and cut triangle shaped edges from them.

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Source: http://www.cookingclassy.com/

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