Christmas candy corn
If you’re pressed for time this holiday season but want cute, colorful cupcakes, candy corn and red hots may the be answer. Arranged just so, they look like flowers!
What You Need: white frosting; 6 Christmas candy corns; 1 red hot (cinnamon imperial).
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Place red hot in center of cupcake. Surround with candy corn.
Santa hat cupcake
There’s a huge amount of frosting on this cupcake, so prepare for a Santa-themed sugar shock. There are several ways you could approach a Santa hat design, but I didn’t feel like getting out the pastry bag and 1M swirl tip, so I just piled on the red frosting and whipped out my can of Betty Crocker Decorating Cupcake Icing.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted red (use no-taste red in paste form for best results); white aerosol icing.
How to Make It: Pile on a nice, tall mound of red icing. Use aerosol icing with star tip attached to pipe a border around the rim of the cupcake and a pom pom for the top of the hat.
Easy zigzag Christmas tree
Here are some super-easy Christmas tree cupcakes with no decorating bag or tips required! Just buy green icing in a tube!
What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; green gel or writing icing in tube; Christmas sprinkles; large yellow star sprinkle (this one is from Wilton.)
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use green writing icing to draw zigzag pattern shaped like a tree (skinny on top, wide on the bottom.) You can add a trunk or leave it abstract. Place star confetti on top and sprinkle with sprinkles.
Gingerbread boy cupcake
Run, run as fast and you can … and make cupcakes that look like a gingerbread man. Cute for Christmas!
What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; 2 white Smarties candies; 1/2 pink mini marshmallow; red gel writing icing. Of course you can switch out the candies for whatever you have on hand.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Add candies as shown for eyes and nose. Use gel to draw mouth, allowing extra gel to pool at either end to look like rosy cheeks.
Christmas elf cupcake
Make holiday guests happy with these happy elf cupcakes. Experiment with different colors and designs and let your creativity shine in your workshop-kitchen!
What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; green sugar crystals; 2 green gumdrops; red candy for nose (we used Runts); mini marshmallows; red gel writing icing in tube.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Sprinkle green sugar near top of cupcake for hat (It doesn’t have to be perfect, because the brim will be covered up with marshmallows). Add row of marshmallows to brim and near edge of cupcake for pompom. Add gumdrop eyes and candy nose. Use gel to draw red mouth, letting it “blob” up a bit on either end for cheeky appearance.
Christmas reindeer cupcake
Time for Christmas cupcakes already? Yep! These easy reindeer are based on an example in a 1980s cookbook, but they’re just as cute and tasty today as they were back then. It’s the chocolate sprinkles that add the texture.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; 2 stick pretzels; 1 red sourball; 1 blue mini M&Ms; chocolate sprinkles.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. sprinkle with chocolate jimmies. Add red sourball nose and blue M&M eyes. Stick in pretzels for antlers.
There are as many ways to make a snowman cupcake as there are to make a “real” snowman! This version comes to life someday thanks to two piped icing blobs, mini M&M eyes and red licorice arms.
What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); white icing tinted light blue; white icing; pastry bag and #5 tip (or just use packaged tube of icing or a plastic bag with a hole cut in it); 2 brown mini M&Ms; red licorice strings.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake blue. Fill pastry bag or plastic sandwich bag partway with white frosting. (If you’re using a plastic bag, cut a small hole from which to squeeze the icing. If you’re using a pastry bag, use metal tip #5 or similar.) Squeeze icing into one spot until you have a quarter-sized blob. Stop squeezing before you pull away so the blog stays flat (You can flatten it yourself if you need to, but do it before the icing hardens,) Pipe a similar but smaller blob above the first. Place 2 mini M&Ms, upside down, on the top circle for eyes. Cut strands of red licorice for arms. You could also add buttons, a fruit leather nose or whatever you’d like!
