Easy Cupcakes

Half the fun of these Christmas tree cupcakes is “trimming” your tree with sprinkles, icing and more.

What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); icing tinted light green and green; white writing icing (or pastry bag and round tip); star tip #16 or purchased tube with decorating tip attachment; round and star confetti.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake light green. Using pastry bag or tube with star tip, pipe stars in a tree shape. Remember to stop squeezing before you pull the tip away for the best stars! Use white writing icing and various sprinkles to decorate your tree.

Buy a plastic deer from a cake decorating shop or just score one from the toy store’s plastic animal aisle.

What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); white icing; marshmallow tree; plastic deer.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake white. You can use a decorating bag and tip or a plain old knife to make snowdrifts. Place marshmallow tree and plastic deer and you’re done!

This Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer gets his shiny nose from a gumdrop and his antlers from mini pretzels.

What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); chocolate frosting; 2 blue mini M&Ms; red gumdrop; 2 mini pretzels.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Add gumdrop nose and M&M eyes. Break mini pretzels to look like antlers and poke into cupcake. That’s it!

Simply place a few red hot candies on this star wreath and you have easy Christmas cupcakes!

What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); white frosting; green frosting; pastry bag and metal star tip or prepared tube and plastic tip; red hot (cinnamon imperial) candies.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake white. Tint some icing green using liquid or paste food coloring and fill pasty bag half-full and assemble coupler and #16 or #21 star tip. (You could instead buy green frosting in a tube; and the star tip is usually one in a set of four that screw right on to the tube.) Make a circle of stars, being careful to stop squeezing before you pull away or your stars will have points on their tops. Add red hot candies for berries.

You can use a Rolo, peanut butter cup or similar candy to complete this Christmas cupcake, and then have fun decorating the rest of it any way you’d like.

What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); chocolate frosting; Rolo or mini peanut butter cup; curved section of pretzel; writing icing; sprinkles.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use something pointy to “drill” hole in top of candy wide enough to stick in pretzel without it breaking. Place near edge of cupcake top. Finish creatively with writing icing (or bag and tips), sprinkles and so on. You can make a whole batch of designs!

Let these penguin cupcakes coming marching onto your Christmas dessert table, or any time of year, perhaps at a Happy Feet or Surf’s Up party?

What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); icing tinted light blue; 2 thin mint cookies (we used Necco); 2 Tic Tac mints; bit of orange fruit roll; white icing.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake blue. Using knife, cut 2 thin mints in half. (You’ll have an extra half, and we say just eat it. Or make more penguins.) Arrange one half horizontally for head and the other two, splayed out, for wings. Cut bit of fruit roll into triangle for beak. Add 2 Tic Tacs for feet. For eyes, you can use a decorating bag and tip 1, 2 or 3 to pipe eyes, or just wing it and dap them on with a knife.

Super-quick to make, these snowman face cupcakes are great for Christmas or any winter event. All you need to decorate them is mini M&Ms and a bit of orange fruit roll.

What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); white frosting; brown mini M&Ms; bit of orange fruit roll.
How To Make It: Frost cupcake white. Arrange M&Ms into eyes and a smile (or frown, or laugh, or however your snowman is feeling). Cut bit of fruit roll into triangle shape for nose.