Christmas cupcakes in April...

Christmas is such an important retail date, however it's incredibly important for charities as well. That's why I spent a night in April baking Christmas cupcakes and gingerbread men for a photo shoot for Save the Children's Christmas Jumper Day 2013! 

I used my normal vanilla cupcake, gingerbread and vanilla buttercream recipes with, coloured fondant, red and green food colouring, and marshmallows to create some truly adorable and very Christmassy cupcakes and gingerbread! I think I'll be doing more in December when it feels a bit more appropriate. 

Here are some photos, cupcake decorating instructions below, all are very simple!

To make the Christmas sweaters, I found a very small gingerbread man cookie cutter and used it, just for the torso, to create a sweater shape in white fondant. Let the fondant set a bit and get stiff before you decorate with tradition Christmas patterns using green and red buttercream. 

To make the snowman, stack two marshmallows on top of white buttercream and decorate with black fondant coal eyes and buttons, red buttercream scarf and orange fondant carrot nose.

To make the christmas trees, simply pip an open-star swirl with green buttercream and add small dots of red buttercream frosting.

To make the santa hats, pipe a red buttercream blobby swirl, let sit for a few minutes then with a closed-star nozzel pipe white buttercream along the edges and one small star on top.