Eat | Chocolate Pixy Stix Cupcakes

I somehow inherited a handful of pixy stix recently. Not having the same palate as my 9 year old self, I couldn’t just rip open a tube and pour the straight-up sugar down my throat. No. Those sugar fiend days are over. I now enjoy it in more sophisticated forms, such as cupcakes.
But then I thought…why not put this childhood treat together with cupcakes?
The sugar gives a nice pastel colour and adds a bit of a tang to the cupcake. You can sprinkle it on any cupcake, but I chose a chocolate cupcake with regular vanilla buttercream icing. Here is my recipe, adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (I highly recommend this book, even if you aren’t vegan).

Chocolate Pixy Stix Cupcakes

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Author: Squirrelly Minds

Recipe type: Dessert

Ingredients

Chocolate Cupcake

1 cup milk
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
¾ cup sugar
½ cup canola oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup all purpose flour
⅓ cup cocoa powder
¾ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

1 cup butter at room temperature
3½ cups icing sugar
1½ tablespoon pure vanilla extract
Pixy Stix to garnish

Instructions

Chocolate Cupcake

Preheat oven to 350 and line your muffin pan with cupcake liners.
Whisk milk and vinegar and set aside for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, sift all your dry ingredients in a large separate bowl.
Add all your wet ingredients to the milk mixture and whisk well to combine. Gently fold your wet ingredients in two batches into your dry ingredients, mixing until there are no large lumps.
Fill your cupcake liners ⅔ full. Place in oven and bake for 18-20 minutes. Let it cool for a few minutes then transfer onto a cooling rack. Let it cool completely before icing.
Use your favourite method to spread or pipe your vanilla icing onto your cupcake. Sprinkle with pixy stix dust and eat.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

Cream butter well by hand, with a hand blender or a stand mixer.
/2 cup at a time, add 1½ cups of icing sugar.
Add vanilla extract, mix, then continue to add the rest of the icing sugar in ½ cup batches.
If it becomes too stiff, you can add a teaspoon of milk to thin it out. If it’s too thin, add more icing sugar until you achieve your desired consistency.
Top your cupcakes with icing and sprinkle with pixy stix dust.