Antler Cupcakes • Sarahs Bake Studio

Pin1K

Antler Cupcakes - your favorite chocolate cupcake recipe piled high with chocolate and vanilla buttercream and adorned with homemade chocolate antlers; a positively perfect woodland creatures cupcake.

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure policy.

I first made these Antler Cupcakes for my nephew's woodland creatures first birthday. They went alongside the Tree Stump Smash Cake.

The Antler Cupcakes were such a big success with the woodland creatures theme and the party guests that I felt it imperative to make them again to share on SBS.

Thankfully, these Antler Cupcakes are pretty dang easy to make and don't require too many tools of the trade. Plus, aren't they just the most fun?!

Step 1

The first step is to give your favorite chocolate cupcake recipe it's base signature swirl. This base signature swirl can be either chocolate buttercream or vanilla buttercream. You'll just use the opposite frosting in the next step.

For the sake of easy explanation, we'll be doing what I did, used chocolate buttercream.

Using a pastry bag filled with chocolate buttercream and fitted with a 1M open star piping tip, you're going to pipe a chocolate swirl onto your cupcake.

To achieve your chocolate swirl you'll use even pressure, starting in the middle of your cupcake, and then work your way around and up. It's easier to do than explain, trust me on this.

Step 2

The second step of Antler Cupcakes is basically the same as the first step except you'll use the opposite frosting flavor - in this case, we'll now be using vanilla buttercream AND our piping bag will be fitted with a no.22 open star piping tip.

Side note, you can totally use the 1M open star piping tip for this step as well. I don't because I only have one 1M piping tip and it's currently being used with chocolate buttercream in the previous step. 😉

So, you're now piping a smaller vanilla buttercream swirl on top of your chocolate buttercream swirl. You'll use the same technique as in the previous step but just smaller.

We are mounding on the frosting here because it's the BEST that way! It's really the only way! #justsaying

Step 3

The final step and arguably the most important step of Antler Cupcakes is the chocolate antlers.

I made both chocolate antlers and white chocolate antlers for my nephew's party and alternated buttercreams, however, for SBS I stayed with chocolate antlers.

For the chocolate antlers you're going to download, enlarge to 120%, and print this template that Bakerella made for her Oh Deer! Mini Cupcakes.

You'll place the template under parchment paper and then trace it with a piping bag filled with melted chocolate. I used Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Melting Wafers.

Allow your chocolate antlers to set, separate from the parchment paper, and then safely set aside until you are ready to decorate your Antler Cupcakes.

Add chocolate antlers to a vanilla buttercream swirl or white chocolate antlers to a chocolate buttercream swirl. You're shooting for alternating colors here.