cupcake snowman recipe

ingredients:

cupcakes:
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 ½ cup caster (white) sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1 cup milk
3 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 C).
Grease 12 cupcake cups or line with paper muffin liners. (recipe makes 24 cupcakes (not fairycake size, muffin tin size.)
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.In a small bowl mix the milk and the vanilla.

In a large bowl cream butter and sugar until fluffy.

add half the flour and mix well. Add half the milk and vanilla mixture.

Add eggs, one at a time mixing well. slowly add in the remainder of the dry mixture.

Add the last of the milk and vanilla.

spoon the batter into the cups and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the cake springs back when touched.

Remove from oven and let cool for about 10 minutes, then turn out of pan and onto a rack to finish cooling completely.

Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting
ingredients:
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup unsalted butter (softened)
1-1/2 cups powdered (icing) sugar
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract (flavouring)

Place the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla in a bowl and slowly add in the powdered (icing) sugar as you mix. Blend until smooth.

decoration:
1 large bag of plain m&ms
1 industrious child to separate the m&ms ( you only need the brown and orange ones so bribary is easy)
sweetened and tenderized coconut
1 bag plain chocolate chips


assembly:

place the sweet coconut in a bowl
ice a cupcake with the vanilla icing and gently dip the cupcake into the coconut.
use the brown m&ms for the eyes and the orange ones for the nose, and chocolate chip (coal) for the snowman's smile. Its a fun job that the kids can help you with, especially seperating out the m&m colours, as H quite happily sat for an unheard of 10 minutes sperating out all the m&ms and was quite happy to steal a few.

alternatively you could use other orange sweets for the snowman's nose or colour some marzipan orange and roll flat and cut small triangles (carrots) or roll into small carrot shapes.

cooks notes: I made two batches 48 cupcakes to sell after H's school Christmas Concert. every single cupcake sold at a £1 each, M assures me they were very nice I never got one though I may have made myself just the teensiest bit sickly "tasting" the icing....and cake batter... I also made 2 trays of brownies (recipe soon) which all sold out as well, so I was quite pleased that even if my jewellery wasn't selling my cakes were appriciated and raised some money for H's school.