Unicorn Cupcake

Ingredients

• 1 x pack Betty Crocker Vanilla Cake baking mix
• 80 g butter or oil
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cup milk
• Cupcake liners
• Butter Cream Icing
• 250 g butter
• 480 g icing sugar (approx 3 cups)
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• ¼ cup milk

DECORATIONS

• White Fondant
• Edible glitter
• Food colouring

Did you make this recipe

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, 160 degrees Celcius if fan forced
2. Prepare the Betty Crocker Vanilla Cake baking mix as per the instructions, instead of pouring into a cake tin, divide the mix into a muffin tin lined with cupcake liners. I found the mix made 18 cupcakes, but this will depend a little on the size of your muffin tin. I portioned half the cupcakes, the kids the other half, as you can see some of our cupcakes are massive, some are small, but that’s ok perfection is not the goal!
3. Bake the muffins for 15 – 20 mins, until they have risen, are lightly golden and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the top. The time will vary a little depending on the size of your muffin tins
4. Allow the cupcakes to cool completely on a wire rack
5. While the cupcakes are baking and cooling you can move on with creating some of the decorations for the cupcakes
6. Unicorn Horn There are 2 ways to make the unicorn horn, try both ways with your kids to see which they find easier.  EITHER: Take one Tablespoon sized piece of fondant, roll into a ball, then roll out into a sausage around 8 cm long, you want the ends of the sausage to be thinner and the centre of the sausage a little thicker.  Fold the sausage in half and twist the 2 halves together to create the twisted horn. OR: Take two teaspoon sized pieces of fondant, roll each into a sausage around 4 cm long, the sausage should be a little fatter at one end than the other, twist the 2 sausages together to create the spiral unicorn horn. Once you have made your unicorn horns roll them in edible glitter, we used gold, but you could use any colour. Leave the horns to harden for an hour or two
7. Unicorn Ears: Roll fondant out until it is around 5mm thick, using a knife cut strips around 2 cm wide. Depending on the age of your child, they can do this. Using angled slices cut the strips into triangle pieces. Once you have the triangles, use the knife to score a second smaller triangle inside each one. This acts as the line for when you add the food colouring. Mix a little pink food colouring with water. Using a paint brush paint the inside triangles. Squeeze the bottom corners of the triangles together, this will create an ear shape. Leave the ears to harden for an hour or two
8. Icing: Prepare the buttercream icing. I made a double batch so that we could play with a few different colour ways, and that is what my quantities are for, but you would only need one batch of icing, so feel free to halve the quantities
9. Start with softened butter (not melted, but soft). Use an electric beater or cake mixer to beat the butter until it is as white as possible. Then add ? of the icing sugar and beat, add ? of the milk, alternate adding the icing sugar and milk until it has all been added.
10. Divide the icing into bowls, (we did 6 different colours) I have 3 children, so each child chose 2 colours and then stirred the food colouring into the icing
11. Fill a piping bag with icing (to create the icing effect I used a 3 way piping bag, it was my first time using it but it was really easy, you don’t have to do this though, a one colour unicorn will be fine too!
12. Our two colour ways using the 3 way bag were (pink, purple, yellow and blue, green, pink) Personally I think the blue green and pink versions were the best, but one of my daughters loved the pink purple and yellow, so be adventurous with the colours
13. Ice your cupcakes using the piping bags, do whatever you want, swirls, flowers, anything goes for unicorns
14. Your unicorn horns should now be solid, if some are a little structurally unsound, poke a toothpick through the centre of them. Top each cupcake with a unicorn horn and two ears, and voila a unicorn cupcake!