Christmas Cupcakes: A Sugar Paste How To

This past weekend I was tasked with making 30 cupcakes for a Christmas soirée. I was very pleased with how these cakes turned out, and thought I'd pass on some sugar-coated wisdom from my experience.

These were made using a cream cheese frosting base and topped with sugar paste decorations. This technique is great because the paste is easy to mold into almost any kind of decoration! You can see here that I used this same technique for these Thanksgiving cupcakes.

You can purchase sugar paste at the store - my favorite brand is Duff.  Make the decorations 2 days before you plan to assemble your cupcakes. Use a gel food coloring and kneed into the paste a little at a time. Plan out your dying strategy, and go from light to dark. For this Christmas party, I did 15 snowflake and 15 holly cupcakes. So, I first made the snowflakes, then the leaves and then the holly berries. This way, any residual food coloring on my hands or work surface won't get on the white snowflakes or green leaves.

Then, roll out the paste to 1/8 inch thick and cut out your shapes. If you have a cookie cutter this is by far the easiest route. I used a cutter for the fall leaves and snowflakes, but not the holly leaves. Lay out your shapes to dry at room temperature for two days. For leaves, dry in a bowl so they curve. The trickiest part by far is finding somewhere for them to dry where your toddler can't get them with his grubby little fingers.

I wanted the snowflakes to sparkle, so once they were dry I made some icing by beating two egg whites until frothy, and then slowly adding 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar. This makes an icing that's easy for piping. I used a size 2 tip and filled a pastry bag (for full pastry bag instructions, check out my Buttercream Rosette Tutorial). Then just go to town piping designs on your snowflakes! Once piped, sprinkle with edible sparkles and it gives a great affect! I let these dry for a few hours.

For these cupcakes, I used a size 1M star tip and cream cheese frosting. I made the frosting nice and thick to support the sugar paste decorations (again, for more instructions on how to use a 1M tip, check out the Buttercream Rosette Tutorial). After frosting the cupcakes, I sprinkled with the edible sparkles, and then simply added the sugar paste decorations to the top!

Snowflake martini, anyone?