Celebrate the New Year in style with these adorable New Year’s Countdown Cupcakes with fondant and silver pearl sprinkles!
Countdown Cupcakes for New Year’s
These festive Countdown Cupcakes are a fun way to celebrate the New Year at your next party! Break out the New Year’s noisemakers and horns, baby! Pair these celebratory New Year’s cupcakes with these adorable Glitter New Year’s Cookies and you’ve got yourself a real party!
New Year’s Countdown Cupcakes
Are you celebrating the new year with friends or family? Are you going to a party or get together to ring in the new year? Will there be food and celebratory bubbly, alcoholic or not? These perfect Countdown Cupcakes will complement any dessert table this holiday!
Festive New Year’s Countdown Cupcakes
Made with luscious chocolate cupcakes as a base, dreamy homemade buttercream, and ready-made fondant, you can’t go wrong with these showstopper cupcakes! If you’re going to ring in the new year with friends or family, ring it in with these gorgeous cupcakes this year!
How to Decorate New Year’s Countdown Cupcakes
Ready-made fondant is my BFF when it comes to decorating cupcakes, cakes, and more! I super-de-duper love to decorate but trying to make fondant from scratch is a skill that has eluded me. (Points to my #dessertfail posts lol) Thank you, Wilton, for your ready-made fondant awesomeness! I love you and all your dessert decorating ways! Friends and family members who get to eat my confectionary treats like these New Year’s Countdown Cupcakes also thank you, too! 🙂
New Year’s Countdown Cupcakes for Holiday Parties
This recipe is an easy one to make and duplicate again and again should you need more than 12 cupcakes at a time. You can double, triple, or quadruple it to make for larger gatherings or New Year’s parties! Bring ’em to school for your kids’ celebrations. Bring ’em to neighbors, share ’em with friends. These are so fun and festive and that little silver pearl adds a delightful edible sparkle to ’em, especially when the cupcakes are baked in a gold foil shimmery cupcake liner, don’t ya think?
Happy New Year’s Countdown Cupcakes
Cupcakes truly are the perfect party food. No plate needed with the cupcake wrapper, you know? They’re so easy to eat while you’re mingling about the party or get together with friends. No messy cutting of cake or contending with utensils and a plate. Perfect party-friendly confections, you know?
Celebrate the Happy New Year with Countdown Cupcakes
The edible black food marker used for this recipe is the real MVP here. I love that you can write on your decorative fondant to create the shapes and look that you desire and maybe can’t otherwise get when using decorative frosting. Don’t you think your kids would love to draw the clock faces on these? My kids got a real kick out of this edible food marker, they love being able to draw on confections like this!
How to Make New Year’s Countdown Cupcakes
To make these fun New Year’s Countdown Cupcakes, you will need the following ingredients at the ready:
- Chocolate cupcakes (I have a favorite boxed chocolate cake mix that I love to use, but this is a wonderful chocolate cupcake recipe to try for these cupcakes!)
- Softened butter
- Icing sugar
- Milk
- Black gel food coloring
- White fondant
- Black food marker
- Black decorating frosting
- Silver pearl sprinkles
You will also need the following tools to make these holiday cupcakes:
Cool your chocolate cupcakes on a wire rack. Ensure they’re fully cooled before decorating or you might risk your frosting and fondant sliding off the warm cupcakes. A wire rack is best as it lets air in underneath the cupcakes as well as on top to cool them off efficiently.
In a medium sized bowl, beat butter, icing sugar and milk using an electric mixer. Beat on medium and gradually increase to high. Once the ingredients start combining, add a small amount of black gel food coloring. Continue beating until completely tinted in a nice gray color – you can choose to go as dark or as light gray as you’d like. Scoop your freshly made homemade buttercream into a frosting bag and frost each cupcake using Wilton Star Tip 1M.
Roll out your white fondant so that it’s about ¼ of an inch thick. With a small, circular cookie cutter (about 1 ½ inches in size), cut out 12 fondant circles.
Start decorating your fondant clock: add the silver pearl sprinkles where the 12, 3, 6, and 9 on the clock should be. Draw out two lines in between each silver pearl sprinkle with your black food marker. Use the black decorating frosting to draw out the clock’s “hands” (or, if you feel more comfortable drawing them, use the black food marker to draw the hands).
Place one fondant clock on each cupcake and repeat for every cupcake. Serve, celebrate, enjoy! Hooray!
Countdown Cupcakes for New Year’s
Ingredients
- 12 chocolate cupcakes
- 1 stick butter softened
- 2 cups icing sugar
- 2-3 tbsp milk
- Black gel food coloring
- 4-5 oz. white fondant
- Edible black food marker
- Black decorating frosting
- Silver pearl sprinkles
Instructions
- Cool your cupcakes on a wire rack.
- In a medium sized bowl, beat butter, icing sugar and milk using an electric mixer. Beat on medium and gradually increase to high.
- Once the ingredients start combining, add a small amount of black gel food coloring. Continue beating until completely tinted.
- Scoop your buttercream into a frosting bag and frost each cupcake with Wilton Star Tip 1M.
- Roll out your white fondant so that it’s about ¼ of an inch thick. With a small, circular cookie cutter (about 1 ½ inches in size), cut out 12 fondant circles.
- Start decorating your fondant clock: add silver pearl sprinkles where the 12, 3, 6, and 9 should be. Draw out two lines in between each silver sprinkle with your black food marker. Use black decorating frosting to draw out the clock’s “hands.”
- Place one fondant clock on each cupcake and serve. Enjoy!
If you are as big of a cupcake fanatic as our family is, check out all our cupcake recipes here as well as our various dessert recipes and holiday recipes! We love baking desserts, can you tell? 🙂 But more than that, check out our entertaining recipes filled with party food, or our full recipe index to see what may entice you. I hope you celebrate the New Year surrounded by friends and loved ones and celebrate it safely. Happy holidays to you and yours! Many blessings to you in the coming new year!
Meet Lisa!
Hi, I’m Lisa! Welcome to my perfectly imperfect corner of the web where I've chronicled my life as a mom to "eleventy-billion" kids since 2007! Here I share posts with our family-friendly recipes, crafts and creating art, traveling as a big family, reliving my youth endlessly dancing to 90's music, and documenting our adventurous life while sipping coffee and basking in the delicious Colorado sunshine.