Pull apart mermaid fin cupcakes recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 6 large eggs
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1½ cups sour cream (or milk)

• 4 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla extract, or seeds from 1 vanilla bean
• 10 cups confectioner’s sugar
• Pink, blue, and purple food coloring
• Silver edible glitter

Bake the Cupcakes
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare 2 cupcake pans with liners.
2. Beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until pale and smooth. Add the vanilla extract, then add the eggs one at a time, mixing with each addition.
3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add this to the batter in 2 additions, alternating with the sour cream.
4. Spoon the batter into your prepared pans. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centers comes out clean. Cool completely.
Make the Buttercream
5. Beat the butter with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract, then add the confectioner’s sugar one cup at a time, beating with each addition.
6. Divide the buttercream into 3 bowls and dye one each blue, purple, and pink.
Assembly
7. Arrange the cupcakes on a serving tray of your choice. This is important, as it will be quite difficult to move them after decorating!
8. Place a 1⁄3 cup-sized dollop of buttercream on top of each cupcake. Start with blue at the top of the fin, purple in the middle, and pink at the tail. Use an offset spatula to smooth the buttercream over each cupcake and connect the buttercream dollops together. Don’t worry about creating the ombre effect yet.
9. To create the ombre effect, gently blend just the surface of the purple buttercream up into the blue buttercream and blend the blue buttercream downwards. Repeat with the border between the pink and purple buttercream.
10. Place the remaining pink buttercream into a piping bag and snip off the end, creating a medium-sized round piping tip. Pipe a border around the cupcakes, as well as fish scales and detail on the fin.
11. Sprinkle some edible glitter on top, making the fin sparkle! Make sure to use the glitter last—the piping detail may not stick if piped on after the glitter.