Eden requested red velvet cupcakes for her “friends” party this evening. I wanted to get this up and posted early as I thought I might be busy doing last-minute things for the birthday party. I plan to make cream cheese frosting for the cupcakes and put a simple white swirl on top. To tie them into the “snow” theme, I decided to make some snowflakes for the top of each cupcake. She is only having four friends over, so I made one snowflake for each of the girls.
White Chocolate Snowflakes:
I found images for snowflakes on the web and printed them off. I then melted the chocolate in the microwave and put it into my new Wal-Mart piping tool and began to trace-out the snowflakes. In theory this all seemed like a great idea and basically it turned out fine, but with many grunts, groans and the odd curse under my breath. The melted chocolate was too thin and eventually worked its way under the little handle thingy that was supposed to push the chocolate down to the tip. It worked fine for the first three and then absolutely would not work for the last two. I ended up putting the last of the chocolate in a tiny Ziplock snack bag and snipped off the slightest bit of the corner. This actually worked better than the tool, next time I’ll go straight to the bag. They were a bit difficult to make as the chocolate is so much thinner than icing. The tendency was for it to run all over the place. It took a few tries to figure out how to make it work the best. I ended up doing a thin line and then going back over to make the little arms of the snowflakes thicker and thus sturdier. I also ended up aborting the printed snowflakes on the paper and ended up just doing my own thing. It was hard to make them too intricate with the chocolate having a mind of its own and being somewhat less than cooperative. As soon as I piped a snowflake, I quickly added a silver candy ball to the center and a few clear sugar sprinkles to it before the chocolate set. I had set the paper with the printed snowflakes inside the bottom of a cookie sheet with a layer of wax paper on top. This allowed me to see the snowflakes through the wax paper and also ensured that I wouldn’t break them when I tried to move them. I just set the whole tray with the completed snowflakes in the fridge to set and will add them to the cupcakes on Saturday.
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