Not so Tree Like Christmas Tree Cupcakes

A group of friends and I meet up every two weeks for a catch up and board game night. Every year we have a Christmas night and have a Secret Santa and mini buffet. This year I decided to make some cakes.

They are vanilla cupcakes with buttercream icing, the recipe I used can be found Here.

I have used this recipe many times now and always get compliments, it hasn't failed me yet! I decided to do green buttercream icing to try to make the cupcakes look a bit like trees...not sure they do but i tried. I didn't have any green food colouring so I added some yellow to the buttercream and then added blue gradually to get the colour I wanted. (This took me ages as I didn't want to add too much blue and cause the colour to go awfully wrong). Eventually when I got a colour that I liked I piped the icing onto the cake.

Now, I don't actually own a piping kit for icing so I had to DIY this by using This Method it works and it's useful if you have no other means of piping icing. This, however, is very very messy and not easy to get a good shape for the icing. After using this method twice for my cakes I have decided to invest in a piping kit. Just for ease of use and different icing effects.

After piping the buttercream icing onto the cakes I added some multicoloured sprinkles to look like decorations on the "trees". Then for the final touch sieved a little icing sugar over the cakes to look like snow.

The cakes went down a treat! Even if they don't really look like Christmas trees...