I thought it was about time that I take  a little time  to put up some of the pics of the cupcakes I made around Christmas time.
First, I had my dissertation proposal defense in December. It was at 9am and I wanted to bring something breakfasty so I searched the Internet for some pancake-like cupcakes and found these – Maple Buttermilk Pancake cupcakes. I did not top these with bacon as the recipe calls for, mostly because I just didn’t have the time (I still needed to go over my presentation again), but I did sprinkle some cinnamon sugar on top. Let me just say that of all the cupcakes I have made it seems like these ones as the exporession says “take the cake”, or in this 
cake “take the cupcake.” These have gotten the greatest response of any cupcake I have made to date. Josh and my committee LOVED them! I decided to make them again when I subbed for the secondary intern methods class. They too liked them. They are a bit messy though… the sticky maple is so good th, it is worth it. FYI – my committee did approve my proposal!
One of the holiday cupcakes I baked was based on a Bakerella post I saw. I wanted to try to make something like this. I didn’t want them to look like Christmas trees too much, but more like winter trees. I think these came out pretty good, but they weren’t that easy to eat. The tree itself is made from the tip of a sugar ice cream cone. I dipped it it white chocolate and then sprinkled it with white sanding sugar. On some of
them I placed these big Wilton snowflakes. The cupcakes are devils food cupcakes with cream cheese icing. I sprinkled the icing with some Ande’s Peppermint Crunch Baking Chips.  I ended up bringing some of these to one of the schools I go to to observe interns.
Since I was going to two more schools I figured I had to make some more cupcakes. I decided to try to make another winter-themed cupcake. So, I made some snowflake cupcakes. These were also devils food cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  I tinted the icing a teal color, sprinkled each with some white nonpareils, and placed snowflakes of various sizes on top. I made these snowflake toppers by first printing out some clipart snowflakes. I then placed a piece of wax paper over the clipart, and piped royal icing using the clipart as a guide. I’ve been using this royal icing recipe, which I actually first saw on the Sweetopia bog. Check out this blog if you haven’t already! It is great! I then used some pearlized sprinkles or sugar pearls and some shimmer dust to add a little something to each snowflake. I let the snowflakes dry overnight and then
carefully peeled them off of the wax paper. I actually think of all the cupcakes I have made these are one of my favorites. I just think they looked really elegant for some reason. I brought these to two schools and they were a big hit!
The last cupcake I made in December was a Peppermint Bark Cupcake.  I was planning to bring these to a potluck, but we didn’t end up going to because the weather was bad. I ended up just bringing them with me to campus for a meeting I had the next day. I decided to make these because I had some left-over bark. I made this bark after being in Williams Sonoma and sampling some of their peppermint bark. Man was it good, but totally not worth the price they charged. so, I decided to make my own. When it came time for this potluck I thought I could
use these as a topper. These were chocolate cupcakes with a peppermint ganache center, cream cheese icing and topped with some homemade peppermint bark. The picture was taken in front of our Christmas tree.
