These festive reindeer cupcakes are adorable and tasty. Get the kids involved in the decorating process for a ton of family amusement.
| Prep Time: | 1 hr |
| Cook Time: | 20 mins |
| Additional Time: | 1 hr 5 mins |
| Total Time: | 2 hrs 25 mins |
| Servings: | 12 |
| Yield: | 12 cupcakes |
Ingredients
- 9 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
- ¾ cup white sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 1 ½ cups sifted self-rising flour
- ½ cup milk
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 tablespoon milk
- 1 drop brown food coloring
- 6 vanilla wafer cookies (such as Nilla®)
- 12 red jelly beans
- 24 candy eyeballs
- 24 chewy chocolate-flavored candy (such as Tootsie Roll®)
- 24 pretzels
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease a 12-cup muffin tin or line cups with paper liners.
- Combine 9 tablespoons butter, white sugar, and vanilla extract in a large bowl; beat with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Add eggs one at a time and beat until well combined. Fold in half the flour and 1/4 cup milk and stir to combine. Repeat with remaining flour and milk. Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling each 3/4 full.
- Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 18 minutes.
- Remove the tin from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from the tin and cool completely on a wire rack before decorating, about 1 hour.
- Combine confections’ sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, and 1 tablespoon milk in a large bowl; beat with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Thin frosting with a little milk or water, if necessary. Add food coloring and stir until frosting is uniformly brown. Add more food coloring, 1 drop at a time, until frosting is the color you like.
- Spread a thin layer of frosting on top of each cupcake. Break vanilla cookies in half. Place half a cookie on each cupcake as a mouth. Use a bit of frosting to glue a jelly bean onto the cookie for Rudolph’s red nose. Stick 2 candy eyeballs into each cupcake. Break off a piece from each pretzel so they look like antlers and stick 2 onto the top of each cupcake. Shape chewy candies into ears and stick 2 onto the sides of each cupcake.
- Instead of brown-colored icing for the reindeer cupcakes, you can use chocolate buttercream icing, which will be naturally brown.
- You could color the frosting any color, such as red, blue, or green. Then use white ready-rolled fondant icing to cut out Christmas-inspired shapes to stick on top of the cupcakes. Try stars, Christmas trees, holly leaves, or other holiday-inspired shapes. Silver dragees also make a festive addition to sprinkle on top.
- These cupcakes are great any time of year if you skip the reindeer decorating!
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 427 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 77 g |
| Cholesterol | 57 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 6 g |
| Saturated Fat | 7 g |
| Sodium | 815 mg |
| Sugars | 36 g |
| Fat | 14 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
I would suggest adding up to 3-1/2 Tbsp of butter to the frosting.
Didn’t change a thing. This was a trial run, but I’ll definitely be making them for Christmas for my grand babies. They loved them!
They are adorable! Got lots of compliments at Christmas parties! Take a while so plan for that when making.
The Reindeer Cupcakes were a big hit with our family and neighbors. I did not use red jelly beans (too big). Jellybeans are not always available anyway; instead, I used Imperials (red cinnamon candies) found in the baking section of many stores.
My rating is just for the topping, not the actual cupcake. So adorable!