Baking Corner: Santa Hat Chocolate Cupcakes

Yaaay for my first baking post!! :)
Up front disclaimer: I am not professional, or even kinda good at baking. I just enjoy eating sweet deliciousness and sometimes I have to bake it myself if I want it. But I'd like to share (what I call) accomplishments.

I saw this photo on a website and I was inspired to remake it. I love this, it's so pretty and festive, they look like little Santa Claus hats! I had no recipe, just the picture so I did the best I could and I adapted it into cupcakes to make it simpler. If you were interested in how I did it, here it is:

For the cupcakes, I just went lazy-style and used a box mix. I think I used the Betty Crocker "chocolate fudge" kind. Honestly, it really doesn't matter, you could use whatever you wanted. I just used chocolate to recreate the picture as closely as possible.

That small child you see in the background. Yes, him.
That is my brother, Kevin (in case you were wondering).
He helped make these!

 After I put the cupcakes in the oven, I washed and cut the tops off all the strawberries I needed. I put those aside and then I made the a cream cheese frosting.

This is by far my favourite cream cheese recipe:

Ingredients

4 ounces (113 grams) cream cheese, room temperature

2 tablespoons (25 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups (175 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted

Instructions

In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth. 

Add the butter and beat until incorporated and smooth. 

Add the vanilla extract and confectioners’ sugar and beat until fluffy (2-3 minutes). 

Pipe or spread the frosting on the cupcakes.

Garnish!

When the cupcakes come out, and I have learned this lesson many times, patience is a virtue. I always ice the frikken cupcakes too early and they get all melty and gross. Use a cooling rack if you have one and move them away from the oven.Wait until the cupcakes are completely cool before you spread a layer or two of icing on top. 

Once they're iced pop one strawberry, upside down, on the top of every cupcake. Then you'll need a piping bag to put the cute little icing-hat-tops on. DO NOT FRET, you do not have to go out and buy one. I will tell you how to make them!

How to make a piping bag:

Fold the tops of the bad over and spoon any remaining icing into the bottom of the baggie. 

Push all the icing to one of the bottom corners then twist the top until it's tightly closed. 

Use a pair of scissors and cut of that bottom corner.

*Important: begin with a small hole because while you can always make the hole bigger, you can't really make it smaller. So if you cut it too big to start with, you just kinda screwed.

Now hold the bag around the middle where the bulk of the icing is, apply even pressure and pipe away :)

 Last but not least, pipe a little icing on the tips of the strawberries to make the top of your "santa hat" and you are done! 

Overall: good cupcakes, AMAZING frosting. And strawberries are always a nice touch.
*Fair warning: If you're making these for a party or ahead of time- leave the strawberries of until last minute. After a while, the strawberries can leak red juice onto the icing, so make sure not to put the strawberries on too early or it will make the cupcakes soggy.

Just a Few Things...

• I need a better name for my baking posts. I don't really like "Baking Corner" ... Any suggestions?
• There is a giveaway happening by a great Youtuber names Erica!! You guys should subscribe, check her out and enter! Here's the link to the giveaway video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRTRTSFILZo&feature=g-u
• I quite like baking, especially when I have time on Christmas break.
• I am excited to make Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes at my Aunty Radica's baking party tomorrow.
• I'm also making "Red Velvet Thumbprint cookies" tomorrow. Blog post on those?
• I'm currently watching Storage Wars. This show is addictive. 

Thanks for reading!
-Tash <3