Uni·cone Cupcakes!

11 Feb 2022

To celebrate the 5th birthday of Not Quite Narwhal, and the upcoming publication of Perfectly Pegasus, I made a video to show you how to make a cupcake version of a special unicorn delicacy: Uni·cones! There are instructions below, along with a cone template in case you don’t have snow cone cup laying around.

What you’ll need:

  • Cake mix or your favorite cupcake recipe.

  • Cupcake pan and liners.

  • Frosting: White or light in color.

  • Food coloring: Any kind you want, as long as you are able to make the colors of the (simplified) rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.

  • Sugar crystal sprinkles: White/clear and colorful. The white makes the cupcakes look the most like an icy uni·cone, and the colorful sprinkles help boost the rainbow’s intensity.

  • Snow cone cups: You can buy them or make them at home by rolling paper into a cone. For a printable cone template:

Instructions:

  1. Bake your cupcakes according to the box or recipe instructions. Remove from oven to cool.

  2. While the cupcakes cool, prepare the frosting. Separate frosting into 6 bowls or cups. Then, use food coloring to color the frosting. Each bowl will be a different color of the (simplified) rainbow:
    • red
    • orange (red + yellow)
    • yellow
    • green (yellow + blue)
    • blue
    • purple (red+ blue)
  3. Once the cupcakes have cooled, use a knife or pastry spatula to frost the cupcakes. Create a stripe of each color in rainbow order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.

  4. Once you have your rainbow frosting base, add the sugar sprinkles (again, in rainbow order) with a spoon. The colorful sprinkles should correspond to the frosting stripe colors, but do not have to be exact. (For example, I used pink sprinkles on the orange stripe, and green sprinkles on the blue stripe.) Then, add the white/clear sugar crystals, which will make the cupcakes appear icy. If the sprinkles aren’t sticking, pat them down lightly with the back of a spoon.

  5. Put the cupcake in the snow cone cup and enjoy!

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