Trolls Inspired Cupcakes

These Trolls Cupcakes are inspired by the popular kids movie! These cupcakes are easy to make and a fun way to create your favorite characters – Poppy and Branch.

Trolls Cupcakes

My kids loved the first movie Trolls when it came out a few years ago and are equally excited to see the new movie.  These Trolls cupcakes were inspired by the two main characters of the movie – Branch & Poppy.  We love creating recipes and activities inspired by some of our favorite movie characters like our Belle Cupcakes, Tinkerbell Glitter Slime, and our Princess Watercolor Silhouettes.  These cupcakes are great to make as a special treat for movie night or to serve at a birthday party.  

Trolls Rainbow Cupcakes:

When making cupcakes for a party I always like to make a couple different ones with different decorations, that way everyone can choose which one is their favorite and I don’t have to make 24 cupcakes exactly the same.  We decided to divide our cupcakes into three different varieties: Poppy, Branch, and a colorful rainbow one to go with the colorful happy feel the Trolls movie is known for. 

To make these cupcakes the way you see pictured you will need a few special tools: (affiliate links below)

• 1M Cupcake Decorating Tip.  This is my favorite tip to use for cupcakes so once you buy this tip you can use it over and over again! This tip is what gives these cupcakes the high hair our favorite Trolls are known for 🙂 This set has a 1M included in it but you can also purchase it as a single tip at all craft stores. 
• Colored Fondant. I chose to use Green and Blue fondant for Poppy’s headband.  Fondant is easy accessible at all craft stores and is easy to work with! It’s like playing with play dough.  We chose to purchase pre-colored fondant but you can also buy a package of white fondant and color it yourself.  Each package of fondant is usually around $3 and you will have plenty leftover for other edible treats. 
• Flower Plunger Cutters: these flower plungers are what really gives Poppy her “look”. While I’m not one whom normally buys special kitchen tools for a recipe these plungers are really fun and again, they can be used over and over again for other treats.  They are actually fun to use with Play dough for a kids activity. 
• Cupcakes Liners: I chose to match my characters and used pink polka dot linkers for Poppy, and a light green polka dot liner for Branch. While I definitely think these colorful cupcake liners help complete the look you can also swap for solid colors or colors of your choice. 

How to Make Trolls Cupcakes

The steps to make these cupcakes seem daunting but they really are so simple! 

1. Start by preparing and baking your cupcakes in your desired cupcake liners. We chose to just make our favorite vanilla box mix cupcakes. 
2. Prepare buttercream frosting. (recipe below) Separate frosting into at least two bowls, three if you want to make a third type of cupcake. Color your frosting hot pink for Poppy, and a bright blue for Branch. 
3. Add your buttercream frosting to a piping bag loaded with a 1M Tip, set aside.
4. Roll out your blue colored fondant and use the flower plungers to create three flowers for each Poppy cupcake you are going to decorate.  Our flower plunger was about 1/2 inch in size. I pressed the tip of a clean pen in the middle of the flower to give it that small center. 
5. Roll out a small piece of green fondant into a long thin rope.
6. Pipe your blue icing onto your Branch cupcakes. 
7. Pipe your hot pink icing onto one Poppy Cupcake and decorate before piping another one.
8. Before your frosting begins to “crust” or slightly harden place a green rope around the base of your cupcake icing.  
9. Add a touch of water to your finger and touch the back of your blue flowers, place on your cupcakes with your flowers evenly spaced but somewhat close together. You want to be able to see all three flowers in the front of the cupcake.  
10. Decorate remaining cupcakes and enjoy!