Christmas cupcakes 2: Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

If you've made Santa cupcakes (see here) then you really need to make some reindeer to help the poor ole guy out. This is Rudolph.

Rudolph looks a bit worried. I think that's entirely reasonable, it's his busiest time of year after all.

I made a strategic error when planning these cupcakes. I thought that red as a background colour would look suitably bright and Christmas-y. But with a red background, Rudolph's beautiful red nose doesn't really glow like it should. I would have been better to do a dark green background.

Oh well - there's always next year.

For Rudolph's face, you need to roll out some dark brown fondant. You can get this pre-coloured and chocolate flavoured and that's what I used here.

Cut out some circles approximately one third to half the size of the top of your cupcake, then use a slightly larger circle cutter to take two elliptical 'bites' out of the sides of the circle, as shown in this picture. You're aiming for an hourglass shape that is wider at the top than the bottom.

Once you've made the cuts, round the corners by hand until you have a smooth shape. This will be Rudolph's head.

Stick the head onto the top of the cupcake, leaving a little more room above it than below it (remember you need to fit the antlers above the head). Fix it with a few drops of water.

Here are all the cupcakes with heads on.

Roll two little balls of white fondant and stick them on - these are Rudolph's eyes. Make little holes in the centres so that you can stick the pupils on.

A little tip to help you make a pair of eyes that are exactly the same size: Roll a ball of fondant larger than you need, then cut it in half exactly with a sharp knife and re-roll two separate fondant balls. This way they will be exactly the same size.

Roll two very small balls of black fondant and stick them into the indentations in the 'eyeballs' with a tiny drop of water. Beware if you use too much water next to black fondant, the colour will run.

Roll a ball of red fondant for the nose and stick it in place.

I suddenly realised after I'd made these that there should really be only one Rudolph with a red nose, the other reindeer should all have black noses. So if you wanted to be more historically accurate (if you can say that about reindeer pulling a fat man's sleigh through the air all around the world in one night) you could do seven black-nosed reindeer and one beautiful, shiny red-nosed one.

For the antlers, I used a leaf cutter, cutting out a leaf shape and then slicing it in half vertically and 'feathering' the straight edge with a sharp knife. In this pic you can see the cutter on the right, then the leaf shape and on the left you can see the finished antlers.

Fix the antlers in place and decorate the edges with some cachous if you feel like it. They provide a bit of colour variation and they are nice and shiny. I wanted to use green ones but I only had a kind of aqua colour. I like to think they look green though.

All the little Rudolphs looked rather frightened. I love how they're all looking worriedly in different directions, like they're not sure exactly what they should be scared of, but they're keeping a close eye on everything.

Merry Christmas from Dr Cupcake!!