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These Christmas tree cupcakes not only make pretty and fun treats for Christmas parties, they are also great for gifting too!

4 cupcakes with 2d mini Christmas tree decoration. — Christmas Tree Cupcakes - An Easy Christmas Cupcake Idea

I love how these Christmas tree toppers turned out. In fact, they don't require any special skills to make and yet, make really pretty cupcakes for Christmas.

The cupcakes I baked for this tutorial are plain vanilla cupcakes, but if you like, you can use any other favorite cupcakes recipe. And I chose to bake mine in muffin cups because I wanted my cupcakes to have totally flat tops. It's hard to level cupcakes baked in cupcake liners but with muffin cups, it's so much easier to slice off the domed tops with a knife (without the cupcakes getting squashed from the firm grip when leveling them), hence the choice of muffin casings for my cupcakes.

The cupcakes are given a thin coat of buttercream before the fondant toppers are placed on. Other than that amount of buttercream, the Christmas tree cupcake toppers are made entirely with fondant and accented with lovely sprinkles in matching Christmas colors.

All in all, I truly enjoyed decorating these festive desserts with little Christmas trees and the tutorial below will teach you how to make these on your own, with detailed instructions.

How to Make and Decorate
Notes
- Can you use buttercream for the cupcakes?
- Can you use a chocolate cupcakes base to make these cupcakes?
Like this Christmas cupcakes decorating idea and tutorial? Here are my other posts you should check out
Recipe (Printable)

How to Make and Decorate

Ingredients:

Cupcakes - I used my vanilla cupcakes recipe to bake the cupcakes (see the recipe card below for the full recipe). For a single batch of the recipe, I managed to get 20 cupcakes baked in medium-sized muffin casings.
Buttercream - I used buttercream to coat the top of each cupcake before placing the toppers on.
Fondant - The cupcakes were almost fully decorated with fondant save for the sprinkles. I used Satin Ice fondant in white , green and dark chocolate .
Sprinkles - The sprinkles I used for these toppers are from Fancy Sprinkles in a lovely combination of Christmas colors - red, green, silver, and gold.
Shortening & fondant glue - these were the glues for this project. I used shortening mostly and a slight touch of the fondant glue for the sprinkles.

Decorating tools

Fondant extruder tool - This was the main decorating tool for this project. If you don't have this tool, you can always roll your fondant into strips with hand, but it will take you a longer time to complete.
Christmas tree template - This was a hand-drawn template (on a piece of parchment paper) and you can even use a cookie cutter (if you have one in the right size to fit the top of the cupcakes).
Round scalloped cutter - I used this cutter to cut out the white background fondant. If you do not have the scalloped cutter, you can always use a plain round cutter .
Sugar craft knife & scriber needle tool - The sugarcraft knife is a general cutting tool I used in this project. The needle tool was to trace the Christmas tree pattern on the fondant. You can always use a wooden skewer or even a toothpick in place of the needle tool.
Wooden skewers - these were for shaping the Christmas tree trunks.

4 cupcakes with 2d Christmas tree decoration. — Easy Christmas Tree Cupcakes - Perfect for the Holiday Season

Baking the cupcakes

Preheat the oven and prepare the cupcake liners in a cupcake pan.
Beat butter and sugar in a medium bowl until light and fluffy with an electric mixer (hand mixer or a stand mixer), for approximately 2 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl constantly.
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt into the creamed mixture in 4 batches, alternating each batch with milk. Start and end with the flour. Mix until the flour is well incorporated.
Finally, fold in the vanilla extract.
Pour batter into prepared cupcake liners and bake for 20 minutes, until the cupcakes are well risen and have turned golden brown.
Remove the cupcakes from the oven and let them cool in the tin for 5 minutes before removing them onto a cooling rack (wire rack) to cool further.
Keep the cupcakes covered as soon as they turn warm and let them continue to cool down to room temperature, covered. If you are not going to decorate them immediately, store them in an airtight container.

A leveled cupcake in a white muffin casing — Baked and leveled cupcake before decorating

Covering the cupcakes with buttercream

If the cupcakes are domed, level them with a knife before applying buttercream.
To make the buttercream (vanilla frosting), beat butter and powdered sugar (confectioners' sugar) in a large mixing bowl until fluffy.
Add vanilla essence and continue beating until the buttercream is all light and fluffy. Add milk (or heavy cream) if it appears too stiff.
Use a palette knife to spread a thin layer of buttercream on top of each cupcakes.

The Christmas tree template

The tree shape template can be prepared in advance.
And you can start making your cupcakes toppers while the cupcakes are baking.
For the Christmas tree cupcake template, you can draw the shape of a tree by hand or copy the image online. Make sure the template is resized to fit the top of your cupcake (I have a tutorial here on how to resize templates for cake decorating, you can read my tips there). Cut the template out.

Christmas tree paper template — Christmas tree template I used for my Christmas tree cupcakes

Making the white background

Knead and roll white fondant to about ⅛ inches thick. Cut out medium-sized white round cutouts using a scalloped round cutter. Make sure the size of the circles match the diameter of your cupcake tops so that the fondant covers your cupcakes adequately. This will be the white background for your cupcakes.

Tracing the tree

Next, use the cut-out Christmas tree template and trace the outline onto the white fondant backgrounds. Make sure the template is well fitted within the white background. In tracing the Christmas tree, suffice if you trace just the tree and not its trunk.
You will see in the steps that follow, why it is not necessary to trace the tree trunk. To trace the tree, you can use a needle tool, a skewer or even a toothpick.

Tracing the image of a Christmas tree with a needle tool, onto a round piece of fondant

The tree trunk

Next, form the tree trunk. Roll some chocolate fondant into thin strips and coil them up as shown. Use 2 skewers to press the sides and turn them into rectangle coils.

Forming a brown fondant square with wooden picks

Attach shortening to the bottom of the tree outline and attach the trunk to it.

A round piece of fondant decorated with a Christmas tree motif

The tree outline

Next, knead some green fondant, roll it into a sausage and put it into the extruder tool that is fitted with the smallest round-holed disc. Piped out long strips of the green fondant, and guide the strips to form outlines on the traced Christmas trees.

Making the Christmas tree outline with green fondant

Filling up the trees

With the outlines done, it's time to 'fill' the trees up. Again, using the fondant extruder tool, pipe out strips of fondant, but this time, in much shorter lengths (need not be the same length). Roll the ends to make them slightly pointy and coil them up in various sizes.

Fill the Christmas trees up with these fondant coils (make sure you apply a coat of shortening first so that the coils stick to the white fondant).
Even if you place the coils as close to one another as possible, there might still be white gaps visible. Fill these up with tiny green fondant balls (shaped by hand).

Decorating the trees

Finally, add the sprinkles to the Christmas tree cupcake toppers. I used Christmas sprinkles from Fancy Sprinkles in round shapes (these come is lovely red, green, gold and silver combination) and randomly added the red, gold and silver sprinkle balls on the trees. Add a single large yellow sprinkle at the top of the tree. You can also use a yellow star sprinkle if you have.
To make sure the sprinkles stay in place on the fondant Christmas trees, use a very light brush of fondant glue. Too much glue can smear the color on the sprinkles so use as a little as possible. A little goes a long way!

A round piece of fondant decorated with a Christmas tree motif and sprinkles

Attaching the tree topper to the Christmas cupcakes

Once all the toppers are done, apply a thin coat of buttercream to your cupcake tops. Attach the Christmas tree toppers on the frosted cupcakes. The buttercream helps to hold them in place on the cupcakes.

4 cupcakes with 2d Christmas tree deco — Festive Christmas Tree Cupcakes for Holiday Dessert Table

Notes

Can you use buttercream for the cupcakes?

Yes, you can. You can use chocolate buttercream. To make chocolate buttercream, simply add some cocoa powder into the buttercream and beat well. Get the full recipe for buttercream recipe (include flavor options) here.

Can you use a chocolate cupcakes base to make these cupcakes?

Yes, you can. You can use my chocolate cupcakes recipe (with chocolate chips) to make chocolate Christmas tree cupcakes.

Like this Christmas cupcakes decorating idea and tutorial? Here are my other posts you should check out

Recipe (Printable)

Here is the full printable version of the Christmas tree cupcakes recipe and decorating guide:

📖Recipe