Cosmog cupcakes with a surprise inside!

These cupcakes are based on the Pokémon Cosmog, and feature a little cookie face with royal icing details on top of swirls of galaxy buttercream icing. When you cut into the cupcake, you also get a rainbow of Cosmog’s colours!

I couldn’t help but love Lillie and Nebby’s antics in the gen 7 games, and I had to bring the little Nebula Pokémon to life through cupcakes!

Follow the cut for an in-depth tutorial with tons of progress photos, and to see how to make these cuties yourself!

To make these cosmic cupcakes, you will need:

One batch of sugar cookies (dyed black)

One batch of royal icing (dyed blue, yellow, and pink)

One batch of vanilla cupcakes (dyed black, blue, dark purple, violet, pink)

One batch of buttercream icing (dyed pink, violet, dark purple, blue, and yellow)

Gel food colours to get the above colours

White sanding sugar or sprinkles



You will also need:

A sharp knife

A cookie sheet

A cupcake tray

Scissors

Plastic wrap

Pastry bags

Snap-seal baggies (if desired)

A star-shaped tip for pastry bags (ex. Wilton M16)

Start by making the little cookie faces. To do this, create a paper template of a flower-like shape with six round “petals,” then cut it out. The template should be pretty small, about 1" in diameter at the widest point, so it doesn’t take up too much space on the cupcake.

Next, make your favourite sugar cookie recipe. (A box mix works just fine!) Before rolling out the dough, dye it using a generous amount of black food colour. Knead the dough until the colour is fully integrated.

Roll out the dough until it is about ¼" thick. Place the template on the dough, and use a sharp knife to trace it onto the dough until you’ve cut out the flower shape. Place the cookies on your baking sheet and bake at the desired temperature for 6-10 minutes.



Pay close attention to the cookies – they will bake very quickly due to their small size. Since you may not see any browning on black cookies, you can take them out of the oven to check their firmness. When they’re done, they may lose their shape a little, so use your knife to fix them up a bit while they’re still warm and malleable.

Once your cookies have all cooled completely, it’s time to decorate! Prepare your royal icing and divide it into 5-6 bowls. Leave some white icing, and colour the other bowls yellow, pink, blue, and black if desired. Pour each colour into a snap-seal bag and cut off a small tip. If you’d like, outline each cookie with black dyed frosting. Draw on Nebby’s different expressions; I looked at a bunch of photos and GIFs, and determined that Nebby makes about six different faces, so I drew those! Set your cookies aside.

Next, prepare your favourite cupcake batter. (Box mixes are once again acceptable!) Divide it into 5 bowls, and use food colour to dye them Cosmog’s signature colours: blue, dark purple, violet, pink, and black for effect. I kept most of the amounts consisted, except for less blue and lots more black. Place your coloured batter in snap-seal baggies.

Line your cupcake tray with liners. I used foil and silicone liners, which helped keep the cupcakes moist, and really made the colours pop.

To get the galaxy look, you have to layer the colours of batter. Since the bottom of Cosmog’s body is pink, I made the bottom layer layer pink, and worked my way upwards. Snip off the tip of your pink icing baggie, and pipe a small layer of pink (about a tablespoon) on the bottom of every cupcake liner. Pipe a tablespoon of violet and then dark purple.



I added about a teaspoon of blue, and about a tablespoon and a half of black to top it off. Try not to overfill your liners – ¾ full is more than enough. Tap your cupcake tray on the counter to get rid of any air pockets before popping them in the oven. Bake your cupcakes at the required temperature and for the required time, and keep an eye on them.



They are done baking when a toothpick inserted comes out dry, and the tops are firm and springy. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack. Don’t worry if you see some of the other colours peeking out from the black - we’re going to cover them in icing anyway!



I baked some of my cupcakes in silicone cupcake molds, and this is what they looked like when I removed them! Look at those lovely outer layers!



Next, prepare your buttercream icing. Divide it into 5 bowls and dye the icing pink, violet, dark purple, blue, and yellow. Place them in snap-seal baggies or pastry bags. Since the blue will be Cosmog’s fluffy “arms,” place it in a pastry bag so you can use a star-shaped tip. Snip off the tips of all the bags.

To get the icing galaxy swirls, lay out a large rectangle of plastic wrap. Pipe out parallel lines of the dark purple, violet and pink (using more dark purple and less pink). Don’t go too close to the edges of the plastic wrap like I did, because it risks overflowing!



Gently roll the icing into a tube and twist the ends, ensuring the plastic wrap is fully sealed. Snip off one end, place the galaxy icing tube into a pastry bag, and snip off a medium-sized tip.

Now it’s time to frost the cupcakes! Ensure you have twisted and sealed the top of the icing tube, and always have one hand gripping it from the top. Going around the perimeter of the cupcake, make flat, round little swirls. I made 6-7 swirls around the cupcake, and finished with a bigger one in the middle. Make sure the outer swirls don’t overlap too much, as you want it to look like Nebby’s fluffy body.

Use the yellow icing to make a ½" thick yellow line at the top and bottom of the cupcake, with each line starting between two galaxy swirls. Make the line fat near the outside and pull it into a small point towards the inside. Place the cookie faces on the cupcakes, making sure the yellow lines go between the round petals of Nebby’s face.

Lastly, take your blue icing with the star-shaped piping tip, and pipe a small dot on either side of the top yellow line. Decorate each blue dot with some white sanding sugar, and you’re done!

Another option for frosting the cupcakes instead of making 6-7 swirls is to just make one large swirl covering the entire cupcake. Add the yellow lines and cookies faces, and you get a slightly more abstract design that looks more like Cosmeon!

I just love how these came out! Nebby is such a fun character, and it was really fun imagining as a cute cupcake. It’s a pretty easy project for beginning bakers, but it has a lot of steps and takes at least 1-2 days to complete. It’s worth it for those faces, though!



Here’s what the cupcakes look like split open! We’ve get Nebby both on the outside and on the inside. It may not get in your bag, but it will get in your belly!