Santa Hat Cupcakes!

So its the weekend before Christmas and I have been researching to find the perfect dessert to take to my family dinner. I came across this recipe and not only is it super cute, it is soooo simple and easy to create. These cupcakes will make it look like you had a full ride scholarship to the best culinary school in the country! It is basically a chocolate cupcake with a strawberry turned upside down on top. You pipe (or spread) some read icing on the strawberry, dot on some white frosting and you're done! It is literally the easiest dessert ever and it looks like you spent a lot of time piping these cute little hats!

Here is the recipe...

1 box chocolate cake mix (plus required eggs, oil)
1 batch buttercream frosting
Red food coloring (I cannot recommend AmeriColor’s Super Red gel coloring enough — buy a bottle, it’s well worth it!)
A large round pastry tip and a small star tip

1. Bake cupcakes according to box directions.
2. Tint a portion of the buttercream frosting red. Pipe large “blobs” of red frosting onto each cupcake using a large round tip.
3. Pipe white frosting around each hat using a star tip. Also pipe a bit of white frosting at the top of each hat.

That’s it! Simple, right?

Only one tip for this recipe (cause they're almost fool-proof) and it is VERY important:

• Invest in some good quality food coloring. You get to cheat and use a cake mix for the cake part so use the money you save and buy some of the best food coloring you can find. Like I mentioned, a good brand is AmeriColor. It is hard to get a rich red color when you are adding the food coloring to white icing. If you use a lesser quality coloring, it will probably turn pink, regardless of the amount of coloring you use. So do not go cheap on this ingredient!

These cupcakes are so adorable and so festive. They are perfect for Christmas (obviously), but honestly even year-round you could tweak them up a little for certain holidays. Change the red icing to brown to make pilgrim hats, or cut the strawberries in half and cover them in white frosting to make bunny ears! See, this recipe is very easy to change up for any occasion.