Make these easy reindeer cupcakes by adding easy gum paste reindeer antlers to any plain cupcake. I made all of mine Rudolph cupcakes, but you could easily make all of Santa's reindeer!
I am a big fan of edible cupcake toppers. Plastic and printed cupcake toppers are cute, but there is something magical about the entire thing being edible! These reindeer antlers and Rudolph nose cupcake toppers are made out of gum paste. Satin Ice is my favorite brand of gum paste to use.
How to Make a Reindeer Cupcake:
Color some gum paste brown. I like using Americolor gel food coloring for this task, since it's so concentrated that it doesn't add too much moisture to the gum paste to get a good color.
Roll a snake of the brown gum paste about five inches long. Cut in half.
Use a paring knife to cut the length of gum paste into a rough antler shape, creating the branching, forked sections.
Gently roll each section of the gum paste antlers between your fingers to smooth out and round the edges, and make a more natural looking reindeer antler cupcake topper.
Roll red (or black) gum paste into a ball to make the reindeer nose.
Tips for Coloring Gum Paste for Reindeer Cupcakes:
- Getting a good, intense red (or black) color can be tough when you're coloring gum paste yourself. I actually bought pre-colored red gum paste for these cupcakes, which made the process very quick and easy.
- Sometimes it's easier to find pre-colored fondant than gum paste. This will also work; it just takes longer to dry and never gets quite as hard. That's just fine for reindeer cupcake noses.
- If you can't find pre-colored gum paste near you, I'd actually make the reindeer noses out of white gum paste, and then paint the outer layer with red or black food coloring thinned with some vodka. You'll get a much more vibrant color that way than mixing food coloring into the white gum paste.
Set your reindeer antlers and noses on parchment paper or waxed paper. Paint the surface with vodka (it dries more quickly than water), and sprinkle with disco dust or edible glitter.
If you're painting white reindeer noses with food coloring, add the edible glitter to the noses at that stage. Don't paint them a second time with vodka, or you'll wash away some of that vibrant color.
Let dry at least overnight before adding the gum paste antlers and nose to your cupcakes to make these darling reindeer cupcakes. You could make these cupcake toppers days--weeks--months!--ahead of time, though. They won't go bad.
You could even add these Christmas cupcake toppers to plain store bought cupcakes. No need to do any baking at all to make amazing reindeer cupcakes!
I made the reindeer cupcakes as part of this collection of Christmas cupcakes I made for my daughters' Irish dance school's Christmas party. Lots of other Christmas cupcake tutorials coming up soon!