Annabel Karmel's snowmen cupcakes recipe

The kids are going to love whipping up a batch of these snowmen cupcakes for Christmas.

Top these snowmen cupcakes with marshmallows for the snowman’s head, red fizzy laces for the scarf and writing icing for the eyes. These Christmas cupcakes take just 25 minutes to bake. This cupcake recipe is ideal for children as they can help decorate and assemble the snowmen easily.

Ingredients

• 100g/4oz softened butter or soft margarine
• 100g/4oz golden caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100g/4oz self raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• Icing sugar for dusting
• 150g/5oz ready-to-roll white icing
• 3 tbsp apricot jam
• Marshmallows
• Red fizzy lances for the scarves
• Tubes of coloured writing icing
• Sugar baubles (for cake decoration) and edible silver baubles

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/300ºF/gas mark 4. Place the softened butter or margarine, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and vanilla essence into the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat for a  few minutes until the mixture is light in colour and fluffy.
2. Line a bun tin with eight paper cases and divide the mixture between them, filling the  cases to about two-thirds of the way up. Bake for about 20 minutes until the fairy cakes have risen and are lightly golden. Lift the cakes (still in their paper cases) out of the tins and leave them to cool on a wire rack.
3. Dust a clean work surface with icing sugar and roll out the icing to about 5mm/¼in thick. Cut out eight circles using a small pastry cutter that is the same size as the top of your cakes. Put the apricot jam into a small dish and stir in one tablespoon of hot water. Brush this over the surface of the cakes and stick the circles of icing on top.
4. To decorate the cakes, use marshmallows for the snowmen’s heads, black writing icing for the eyes, red writing icing for the smiles and sugar baubles for noses (stick them on with a blob of writing icing). Stick the heads on the cakes using a little apricot jam, then stick on the edible silver baubles for buttons.
5. Wrap fizzy lances around the snowmen’s necks for scarves.

Top tips for making snowmen cupcakes

If you don’t have apricot jam you could use strawberry or raspberry jam instead. You could also opt for honey.

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