How’s your festive bakes coming along? And what are you planning to do for your special Christmas menu? If your stuck on ideas then I have a perfect little treat you can enjoy through out the month which is perfect for the children – A Chocolate Christmas Tree Cupcake Recipe 🙂

For this recipe you need to be a little patient and take your time whilst you make your iced trees. I flavoured my icing with some Monin coffee syrup (Chocolate cookie flavour),  which I had never done before but it worked really well. You can, of course, flavour your icing how you please but if you fancy giving the syrup a go you can get some on Amazon. Secondly, to get this lovely green colour I used Sugar Flair colouring, I have used and mentioned it before. I think it definitely beats supermarket colouring if you ask me 🙂 You can also get some off Amazon (there’s lots of other colours too).

Recipe

Makes 12 Prep Time 8 mins Cook Time 15 mins Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

• 60g / 1 & 1/2oz  Caster Sugar
• 60g / 1 & 1/2oz Brown Sugar
• 120g / 3oz Butter
• 2 Medium Eggs
• 40g / 1oz Cocoa Powder
• 80g / 2oz Plain Flour
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1/2 Teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda

For the Topping:

• 150g / 4oz Butter (room temperature)
• 350g/ 8oz Icing sugar
• 2 Teaspoon Monin Chocolate Cookie Syrup
• A drop of Sugarflair Mint Green Colouring
• One bag of Milky Way Magic Stars

1. Preheat your oven to 180oc or gas mark 4 and line a bun tin with cupcake cases (I chose a lovely gold colour for my cases).

2. Whisk together the butter and both sugars.

3. Add the first egg and a little bit of flour and mix in. Add the second egg and a little bit of flour and mix. Finally add the rest of the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.

4. Evenally spoon your mixture into the cases (use an ice cream scoop if you can – makes everything more even). Bake your cakes for around 15 mins.

5. Once baked, leave to cool and lets make the icing!

6. Your butter needs to be at room temperature or the piping is going to be very hard, if its at temperature then sift in the icing sugar and mix well. Add the chocolate cookie syrup (or flavour of your choice) and a drop of green colouring and mix.

7. To pipe you will need a star nozzle, (I got a great set from Lakeland Plastic) and you need to pipe tiny star shapes going around in a circle (pictures underneath).

8. Keep repeating this action, moving slowly inwards and upwards to make a Christmas tree shape (be patient it can take a while) that points at the top. Finally, put a star on top and dust with glitter or icing sugar for the final touch 🙂