Easy Cupcakes

Thanksgiving guests will gobble up these turkey cupcakes, which are made with mint patties and sliced almonds.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; yellow frosting; 1 thin mint patty (such as by Necco); Junior Mint; about 15 almond slices; candy eyes (or just use mini M&Ms or white icing); red writing icing.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake yellow. Place larger mint at center of cupcake. Using dab of icing as “glue,” put Junior Mint on larger mint for head. Add eyes and squeeze small line of red icing for wattle. Arrange sliced almonds in rows behind larger mint for feathers.

Celebrate fall with these easy cupcakes that pair an edible rake with falling leaves. They’re great for harvest festivals and other autumn events.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; yellow frosting; stick pretzel; chocolate Twizzler; leaf-shaped sprinkles (such as by Wilton); scissors or kitchen shears.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Break about one-quarter of the pretzel stick off and discard (or eat). Cut about a 1-inch length of Twizzler. Insert scissors into Twizzler (it’s hollow) and make about six cuts around, about two-thirds up. Poke broken end of pretzel into intact end of Twizzler and fan out ends to look like a broom. Place on cupcake. Add leaves to “ground” and “air.”

This acorn cupcake idea was first seen in the hit book Hello, Cupcake!: Irresistibly Playful Creations Anyone Can Make. I made some for my kid’s autumn-themed bake sale and they were a big hit. They’d be great for Thanksgiving, a nut (or Nutella!) cupcake recipe or any fall festivity.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white or off-white frosting; chocolate frosting; 2 Hershey’s kisses; 2 mini Nilla Wafers; pastry bag and round tip (No. 2 or 3, or just use premade icing in a tube or bag).

How to Make It: Frost cupcake white. Use bit of chocolate frosting to attach mini vanilla wafer cookie to base of unwrapped Hershey’s Kiss. Use pastry bag or tube to add chocolate “stem” to wafer.

These pink pig cupcakes get their sweet, textured ears from sugar wafer cookies with waffle pattern.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted pink; pink sugar wafer cookie; large pink candy-coated mint or similar pink candy; 2 blue mini M&Ms; white icing in tube or pastry bag; knife.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use knife to cut cookies into triangle shapes and place near top of pig’s head for ears. Pipe 2 white dots on pink candy for nose and place in center of face. Add M&M eyes.

These Dracula cupcakes feature Tic Tacs for fangs! Use black icing in a tube so you don’t have to worry about tinting. Happy Halloween!

What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted green; 2 red hots; red writing icing; black tubed icing and star tip; 2 Tic Tacs.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake green. Using black tubed icing, pipe pointy-topped stars (don’t stop squeezing as you pull away) with a row in the back, then three stars, then one, to form a widow’s peak. Add red hot eyes. Pipe red smile. Add Tic Tac teeth.

The vampire bitten cupcake is not my original idea, but I wanted to try my hand at this easy-to-make Halloween cupcake that would also be appropriate for a Twilight party or other vampire-themed event. The vampire pierced it with its sharp teeth, and blood is oozing out! Appetizing.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; toothpick; red gel writing icing.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use toothpicks to poke two holes about half the size of a pencil eraser, approximately 3/4″ apart. Squeeze some red gel icing into and oozing out of the holes for gory blood.

Looky, Wookiees, it’s Chewy cupcakes. OK, enough with the bad jokes. I made more than three dozen of these Chewbacca cupcakes for my Star Wars fan son to take to his kindergarten class — enough to span 12 parsecs. If you want to make these Chewbacca cupcakes more quickly, just skip the “furry” part and frost them in a smooth layer of chocolate. This is a variation of a Chewbacca cupcake I saw online.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; pastry bag and #233 metal tip; white or off-white frosting; pastry bag and small, round metal tip (#2 is good); 2 white M&Ms; 2 black M&Ms; black writing icing in a tube (or, use a black food-safe marker.)

How to Make It: Frost cupcake with a thin layer of chocolate frosting. Put chocolate icing in pastry bag affixed with #233 metal tip. Use tip to make long strands that overlap for a furry effect. Squeeze a dot of black writing icing onto white M&Ms for eyes and place on cupcake. Add black M&M nose. Use white icing and round tip to “draw” a mouth and/or teeth.