Easy Cupcakes

Here’s another take on snowflake cupcakes. Instead of piping your design on flat-topped cupcakes, make snowflakes on fat, rounded cupcakes. Include a variety of patterns for a more realistic snowstorm.
What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); icing tinted light blue; white icing (add piping gel to homemade icing and use pastry bag with round tip, or just buy a tube of white writing icing.)
How to Make It: Frost cupcake light blue and let sit for awhile so frosting “crusts” slightly. Using pastry bag and metal tip (we used tip No. 3), or prepackaged tube, pipe snowflake shapes. To keep from getting unwanted peaks in your lines, stop squeezing before you pull away.

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!

Just as every snowflake in nature is unique, so it can be for your next batch of cupcakes. Have fun experimenting with different designs and colors. Maybe even add some sprinkles, or Wilton Cake Sparkles.

What You Need: 1 cupcake (baked and cooled); icing tinted light blue; white frosting in decorating bag and round tip 1, 2 or 3 (or just use a commercially made tube of writing icing).
How to Make It: Frost cupcake blue. Using fluid motions and even pressure, pipe snowflake shapes onto cupcake. It’s easiest if, for each “line” in your design, you lightly touch the tip to the surface of the cupcake, pull away as you gently squeeze the length of the line, and touch the tip down again to reattach. Be sure to stop squeezing before you pull away.

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!

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.