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These gorgeous Mermaid Cupcakes combine yummy buttercream frosting and pretty Under the Sea colors into a perfectly delicious party cupcake for your Little Mermaid.

Closeup on four Mermaid Cupcakes sitting on a white table in front of a tin filled with cupcakes and a purple table linen.

Every Under the Sea Birthday Party needs pretty Mermaid Cupcakes and boy have we got you covered there.  Featuring delicious chocolate cupcakes topped with creamy swirls of homemade Buttercream Frosting in the most perfect Mermaid colors.  They are so easy to make and so yummy to eat … your Little Mermaid will squeal with delight.  

Ingredients You Will Need

All the ingredients you will need to make Mermaid Cupcakes including cupcakes, buttercream frosting, food coloring and cupcake liners.

How to Make the Cupcakes

Ten chocolate cupcakes sitting on a white table in front of a cupcake tin and white cupcake liners.

Step 1: Make a batch of cupcakes.  You can use a cake box mix, we have all the instructions you’ll need to make them taste just like homemade right here. Or you can make them from scratch with our yummy Homemade Chocolate Cupcakes recipe.  We used chocolate cupcakes but Vanilla Cupcakes would taste great too.

How to Make the Frosting

Closeup on a glass bowl filled with buttercream frosting sitting next to sticks of butter and a decorating bag filled with frosting.

Step 2: The key to these delicious cupcakes is our Best Buttercream Frosting recipe.   It is light and creamy and buttery and super delicious! You will find the recipe and directions here.  One batch of frosting will be enough to frost 12 cupcakes.  If you used a boxed cake mix, you should have about 18 cupcakes and will need to double the frosting recipe.  Once you have the frosting made, split it into thirds.  Because the three layers of the frosting swirl are not all the same size we portioned our single batch of frosting as follows:

Purple:  1 cup
Pink: 3/4 cups
Blue: 1/2 cup

How to Color the Frosting

Collage image showing how to make purple, blue and pink buttercream frosting.

Now it is time to tint the frosting. We like the Wilton Color Right Food Coloring.  It is concentrated and you can get a bright color without having to use too much food coloring.  Here are the formulas we used for our Mermaid frosting colors:

Purple: 2 drops of Pink and 1 drop of Blue Food Coloring
Blue: 2 drops of Blue food coloring
Pink: 3 drops of Pink food coloring

Putting It All Together

Chocolate cupcake in a purple cupcake liner sitting in front of a tin of cupcakes and buttercream frosting in decorating bags.

Step 4: Load the three colors of frosting into separate decorating bags with a Wilton 1M Open Star Decorating Tip and gather up your cupcakes!

Collage image showing how to make the frosting swirl on the top of the cupcake.

Step 5:  For each Mermaid Cupcake, you will make three swirls of the frosting.  Purple on the bottom, then pink, and finally blue.
Step 6:  With the decorating bag and the 1M tip, make one and a half circles of purple frosting around the edge of the cupcake.
Step 7:  Next apply another 1 1/2 circles of pink frosting but this circle should be a little smaller than the purple frosting layer as shown in the picture above.
Step 8: Finally, with the blue frosting, add a third circle but this time finishing with an upward flourish so that the swirl ends in a peak at the top.

You can watch a video of how to make a frosting swirl like this in our How to Frost Cupcakes post.

Closeup on three Mermaid Cupcakes sitting on a white table with colored Mermaid Tails surrounding it.

Other Fun Cupcake Recipes You Will Love

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Mermaid CupcakesPrint

Mermaid Cupcakes

Yield 18 cupcakes
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 18 minutes
Additional Time 10 minutes
Total Time 38 minutes

These gorgeous Mermaid Cupcakes combine yummy buttercream frosting and pretty Under the Sea colors into a perfectly delicious party cupcake for your Little Mermaid.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Make a batch of chocolate cupcakes cupcakes.
  2. Make 1-2 batches of our Best Buttercream Frosting recipe (depending on how many cupcakes you are frosting.)
  3. Once you have the frosting made, split it into thirds.  Because the three layers of the frosting swirl are not all the same size we portioned our single batch of frosting as follows: Purple:  1 cup Pink: 3/4 cups Blue: 1/2 cup
  4. For each Mermaid Cupcake, you will make three swirls of the frosting.  Purple on the bottom, then pink, and finally blue. With the decorating bag and the 1M tip, make one and a half circles of purple frosting around the edge of the cupcake.
  5. Next, apply another 1 1/2 circles of pink frosting but this circle should be a little smaller than the purple frosting layer as shown in the picture above.
  6. Finally, with the blue frosting, add a third circle but this time finishing with an upward flourish so that the swirl ends in a peak at the top.

Notes

Food Coloring Formulas
Purple: 2 drops of Pink and 1 drop of Blue Food Coloring
Blue: 2 drops of Blue food coloring
Pink: 3 drops of Pink food coloring

Did you Make this Recipe? Leave a review below, then snap a picture and tag @twosisterscrafting on Instagram so we can see it!

© Two Sisters Crafting
Cuisine: American / Category: Cupcakes