Gloverly Cupcakes

Say hello to Rudolph. And his brothers. When I saw these in several places on the internet I just had to make them! And they looked so cute when they were finished that I could quite easily have gobbled them all up myself. But since they’re meant to be presents for people I had to resist. They did go through quality control a couple of times though, which Tom, in the role of chief taste tester appreciated. Do you want to make Rudolph and his friends too?

Sometimes the simplest things look the best. These are literally just a ball of chocolate brownie (made in the same way as the mini Christmas puddings), coated in milk chocolate with a red sugar ball stuck on for the nose and some royal icing piped on for the eyes.  That’s it. The hardest thing about making them was finding pale brown pile cleaners – I eventually found them on ebay.

Here are the stages of Rudolph…

I made them slightly bigger than the mini Christmas puddings though. In order to turn them into reindeer here’s a slightly more detailed description of what I did (although it is really really simple!):

1. Shape the chocolate brownie balls in the same way as described here.
2. Melt a lot of milk chocolate in a tall mug – the key is to melt more than you need and have it something which is deep rather than a shallow bowl (to make it easier to dip them fully).
3. Dip the end (about 5mm) of a cake pop stick into the melted chocolate and then stick into a brownie ball. Repeat as many times as you want reindeer – I made 30.
4. Place these in the fridge and leave the chocolate to set – this will stop the balls falling off the sticks when you dip them into the chocolate.
5. Once they’re set dip the cake pops one at a time into the chocolate so that it just comes up to the top of ball. Shake a bit (or twizzle it round gently) over the mug to remove the excess chocolate and then stand on a baking tray to set.
6. Before the chocolate sets completely press a large red sugar ball onto each one for a nose – I dipped 10 into the chocolate and then went back to press the red balls into the first one until all 10 of them had noses and then started dipping the next 10. If you put the noses on too soon they slide down!
7. Once they are completely set, pipe 2 dots of white royal icing on for the eyes, followed by a smaller dot of black.
8. Finally twist some pipe cleaners around the stick to make the antlers. Or place in a small bag first and use the antlers to do the bag up!