Christmas bakes are a great way to get kids started in the kitchen: they not only offer up some simple cooking processes but are also a perfect way to get your kids being creative with flavors and presentation - the more sparkles, the better!
Self-taught cook and food vlogger Barry Lewis often has his family in the kitchen with him, helping to make imaginative recipes for his videos. Here they show you how parents and kids alike can bake and decorate their very own characterful Christmas cupcakes.
All Hello
Barry Hello everybody my names Barry Lewis this this is my lovely family we’re here today with the BBC bitesize parents toolkit to make some fantastic.
Rebecca Christmas cupcakes.
All Yay.
Barry Christmas is amazing time year to make cupcakes in fact all around is but of course for kids and big kids.
Phoebe That's me.
Barry You can really have some fun and let your imagination take over in the kitchen and that is exactly what we've done today so Phoebe to decorate cupcakes what is the first thing you need.
Phoebe To make the cupcakes.
Barry Brilliant.
Chloe That’s what we did.
Barry Oh yeah we did do that.
Rebecca We did and we found a recipe, well there’s loads of recipes.
Barry There are loads of recipes on the Internet so grab just make your favourite cupcake recipe we actually divided up into vanilla ones and chocolate just because it's nice to mix up and to be fair I would have eaten them without any decoration. I'm quite a simple person quite like having cake and smelt amazing.
Rebecca Then we got to decorate them.
Barry These are all ideas I'm making some hollowed marshmallow cupcakes I'm going to hollow out my cupcakes with an apple corer fill it with marshmallow top it with the buttercream mix with the coconut and then role the white chocolate in the coconut buttercream to hopefully make snowball cupcakes.
Phoebe I’m making Santa hats with strawberries, chocolate chips, and butter cream and will put strawberries on top to make it look like a hat.
Chloe I have got icing, pretzels, fondant icing, and red sweets to put on my cupcakes and hopefully it will look like Rudolph.
Rebecca I’m going to make polar bear cupcakes I've got some white buttercream some coconut, marshmallows and fondant icing hopefully they’ll look like polar bears.
Barry Mate you must have learnt that from me.
Phoebe Nope.
Chloe There.
Barry That’s awesome.
Rebecca Do you know what a polar bears ears look like? A marshmallow for the nose. It looks like a pig. It’s a Christmas pig, hang on let's get some eyes.
Barry Because that’ll make it better right?
Rebecca Oh no I forgot to put the coconut on, but I need the coconut I'm gonna try this with the coconut.
Barry That’ll look amazing with the coconut. There we go. If that doesn’t say polar face nothing will. Yours are quite easy right?
Phoebe Yeah, but you could put jam in the middle and core it out like yours.
Barry Nice, go on then.
Rebecca Here we go I went with fondant icing for the nose this time instead of a marshmallow.
Barry It’s a little bit lower isn't it.
Rebecca Aw he’s so cute. Polar bear. Too cute to eat.
Barry That’s cool.
Barry Big Daughter Cam frosting mine covering up that marshmallow core because as long as I've got icing on it is going to be a glue like this see that's my snowy landscape but we're not done yet. We’re going to take a white chocolate, we're going to roll it, it's going to get a little bit messy but I'm going to make sure I've covered it in the buttercream just a little light coating into the coconut again, lift the coconut on top and that is a snowball cupcake is it? I think it is. Finish it with some sprinkles and it helps if you get some of them on the cupcake.
Barry Well I don't know which one is my favourite I mean I want to be biased but I feel like some of yours are much better than mine.
Rebecca I like them all because they’re all different. We all made them in a different way with different ingredients that we had lying around the house.
Barry That's the thing isn't it it's been fun, little bit too much mess but I think that's half the fun right.
Rebecca All part of making the mess.
Barry Oh actually no here’s the best part.
Rebecca Eating.
Phoebe That’s a cupcake.
Chloe A really good cupcake.
Rebecca That’s amazing.
Barry Stonking.
Barry So there we go a simple, but a little bit messy, festive fun for everyone in the kitchen at Christmas. Merry Christmas.
All Merry Christmas.
To make Christmas cupcakes with your child, you can start with this simple cupcake recipe from BBC Food, then take inspiration from the Lewis family's decorations below. that some elements of the bake will require your supervision
Polar bear cupcakes
Ingredients
- Vanilla cupcakes
- Buttercream
- Desiccated coconut
- Black and white fondant icing
- Marshmallows (maybe)
Spread a generous helping of soft white buttercream onto the top of the cupcake - buttercream is quick and easy to make, as you can see in this BBC Food recipe - then push and roll the cupcake cream-side-down into a bowl of dessicated coconut. Now the polar bear has fur!
Next, create ears using the white fondant and stick them onto your buttercream. Apply a marshmallow or more white fondant icing to the centre of the cake, then a small black piece of fondant icing for the nose. Lastly, roll two small pieces of black fondant icing into eyes and stick them between the nose and the ears.
Snowball cupcakes
Ingredients
- Vanilla cupcakes
- Soft marshmallow spread
- Buttercream
- Desiccated coconut
- White chocolate balls
- Blue sprinkles
Use an apple corer, or a teaspoon to cut a hole in the centre of the cupcake and fill this hole with the marshmallow spread. Cover the top of the cupcake with a generous helping of buttercream, then dip the top into the desiccated coconut, so it sticks to the cake and forms a snowy surface. Next, roll a white chocolate ball in the buttercream so a thin layer covers the outside, then roll this ball in the desiccated coconut until you have a snowball. Firmly place the snowball onto your cupcake. Finish with a dash of sprinkles.
Reindeer cupcakes
Ingredients
- Chocolate cupcakes
- Chocolate icing
- Pretzels
- Black and white fondant icing
- Round red sweets
Spread the chocolate icing liberally onto the top of the cupcake. Then form the black and white fondant to create two eyes and stick them onto the icing. Stick the round red sweet between the eyes for a nose, then break a pretzel in half so you have the perfect antler shapes and poke two of these above each eye.
Santa hat cupcakes
Ingredients
- Chocolate cupcakes
- Strawberries
- Buttercream
- White chocolate chips
If you're feeling ambitious, you could help your child use a piping bag to apply buttercream to the top of the the chocolate cupcake, just like Phoebe in the video above, but, if not, they could easily use a teaspoon instead. Once there is plenty of buttercream on the cake and it is shaped into the brim of the santa hat, push a strawberry top-down into the buttercream ( to cut the top of the strawberry off for your child). Then, simply add a little more buttercream to the very tip of the strawberry and finish it all off with a white chocolate chip.
More from BBC Bitesize Parents' Toolkit…
Parents' Toolkit
Fun activities, real-life stories, wellbeing and loads of helpful advice - we're here for you and your child.
Fun activities for smaller children
Four to five-year-olds can have fun and learn new skills with these videos. From Tiny Happy People.
Rob Biddulph's five tips to help you confidently draw with your kids
Rob Biddulph, author and official illustrator for World Book Day, has some great tips and tricks to share to help you draw with your kids.
How to make a secret spy code wheel
Help your child make their own cipher wheel so they can create and learn their very own secret code!
