Lick The Spoon: festive

In celebration of Cupcake Day and that of Christmas, I have utilized a stack of left over cupcakes to create an edible wreath. What a great activity to do with the kids in the lead up to Christmas! If you're looking for things to do with kids in the Christmas holidays, here's a memorable and yummy activity that is bound to keep them busy and get them excited.
All you need is a number is small cupcakes-enough to make a circle, and perhaps an inner circle to make the wreath thicker. Then you will need enough green coloured icing mixture to cover the cupcakes, as well as a large "grass" nozzle. A grass nozzle has several holes in the end to create a grass effect, or in this case, a rough pine needle look. You can most likely pick one of these nozzles up from your local cake decorating store. To the finished wreath, I also added a large gold bow, and some artificial red berries to make it look more festive. The kids went wild for it!

CUPCAKE CHRISTMAS WREATH

Basic butter cake recipe for cupcakes (makes 12 or 24 mini cupcakes. I used mini ones for the wreath):

125g butter
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 cup SR flour
1/2 cup corn flour
2/3 cup milk
2 egg whites

Preheat the oven to 180C.
Line a 12 hole cupcake tin with 12 cupcake cases. Beat the butter and the sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg and beat until combined.
Sift the self raising flour and the corn flour and fold into the butter mixture along with the milk. Beat the eggwhites in a clean bowl until soft peaks form. Fold into the milk mixture (don't worry if the mixture looks a little curdled.)
Divide the mixture between the 12 cupcake cases. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden and just firm to touch. Leave for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

Basic Butter cream icing:

250g butter
2 1/2 cups icing sugar
2-3 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
green food colouring

Beat the butter until creamy. Sift the icing sugar into the butter mixture and whisk, along with enough milk to get a nice thick texture. Add the vanilla and the food colouring, and thoroughly combine. You may want to add a little more icing sugar if your icing does not hold shape.

Assembly:
Take all the wrappers off the completely cooled cupcakes. Arrange one circle of cupcakes, then use the remainder to add another inner circle Fill a ziplock bag fitted with a grass nozzle with the butter cream icing. Pipe onto the cupcake wreathe using until the tops are well covered. Decorate as desired with ribbons and holly to complete.