Makes: 20 cupcakes

Time required: 2 hours + 2 hours for unicorn decorations

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆

Inspiration:

Very excited to have baked my first cupcakes in Hong Kong, which was an order of 20 unicorn themed cupcakes for a 4th birthday party. As someone who has barely worked with fondant in the past … and especially not during the Hong Kong summer where the humidity impacts the texture of fondant, one of the challenges for these cupcakes was figuring out how to make the unicorn horns.

Elements I settled on for the cupcakes:

• vanilla cupcakes with raspberries and white chocolate chips
• cream cheese frosting – I chose light pink, bright pink, turquoise and purple as my unicorn colours … later also realising that the turquoise and purple I used are the same colours as Sully from Monsters Inc.
• Marzipan and  pocky sticks for the horns and ears. I chose marzipan over fondant for the horns and ears as it seems to hold up better in the Hong Kong humidity. I also used pocky sticks over toothpicks to hold together the horns – baking for a kids party I wanted to make sure everything within the cupcake was edible

Ingredients:

Cupcakes:

• 200g butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 300g all purpose flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 300 ml milk
• 30g white chocolate chips
• 50g raspberries

Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 500g cream cheese
• 200g butter
• 300g icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 1 tsp lemon

Unicorn decorations:

• 200g marzipan
• edible gold spray paint
• 1 pack pocky sticks
• pink/pearl sprinkles

Instructions:

Cupcakes:

1. preheat oven to 190C (170C fan forced)
2. beat butter until smooth
3. add sugar and beat until light and fluffy
4. mix in the eggs one at a time and vanilla
5. add in the sifted flour mix (flour, baking powder, salt) and milk alternatively (around a third at a time) and mix until just combined
6. spoon the mixture into lined muffin tins with the cups around 2/3 full
7. top with raspberry pieces and white chocolate chips
8. bake for 20 minutes until golden and let cool before frosting

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1. beat cream cheese and butter until smooth
2. slowly beat in the sugar until light and fluffy
3. mix in the vanilla and lemon
4. divide the frosting into several batches (uneven in volume) and colour each batch a different colour. I chose light pink, bright pink, turquoise and purple

Unicorn horns and ears:

1. cut the pocky sticks ~3cm in length (depending how tall you want the unicorn horns)
2. take a small amount of fondant and roll it into a cone shape over the pocky, leaving ~1cm of the pocky stick hanging out the bottom which you will later use to poke into the cupcake. To create the ‘horn’ look, gently run a toothpick spiral around the marzipan cone
3. spray over the horns with edible gold dust
4. for the ears: roll out the fondant and roughly cut small triangles
5. take two corners of the triangle and press them together to create the ears

Decorating:

1. place each colour of the cream cheese frosting into a separate piping bag fitted with different sized star tips
2. pipe one colour of frosting at a time onto the cupcakes. I started with the light pink frosting as I wanted light pink to be the dominant colour
3. finish the cupcakes by placing on the horns and ears. I also added pink and pearl sprinkles to add more texture and sparkle

 

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