Easy Cupcakes

There are probably as many ways to make butterfly cupcakes as there are species of butterflies. This version uses mini sugar-coated fruit slices for the wings and chocolate chips for the body. Add some round sprinkles and gel and you’re off and flying!
What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; 2 mini sugar-coated fruit slices; 4 chocolate chips; black gel writing icing in tube; round pastel sprinkles.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Place chocolate chips in line going from one edge of cupcake toward the center for butterfly body. Add 2 fruit slices, with round edges facing, on opposite sides of “body.” Use gel icing to pipe black antennae. Use dab of white icing to stick sprinkles to wings.

Here’s another twist on easy dotted cupcakes, this time in the popular color combination of pink and brown.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted pink; mini brown M&Ms.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake pink. Place mini M&Ms on top of cupcake with the M side down.

This is an easy technique, but it has a neat impact. Simply arrange different-sized M&M candies on top of a cupcake.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; mini M&Ms; regular M&Ms; peanut butter M&Ms.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake white. Add M&Ms in various sizes and colors. That’s it!

For a fun various on pig cupcakes, try this version with a ring in its nose.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted pink; red mini sugar-coated fruit slice, cut in half; mini pink marshmallow; 2 brown mini M&Ms; red gel or tube icing with round tip.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake pink. Add ears, eyes and nose as shown. Using gel or tube icing, draw U-shape under nose for nose ring.

These sunflower cupcakes are minty fresh and easy-as-can-be.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting (white or whatever you’d like); yellow mini mints (smooth and melty, the kind with white nonpareils on the flat side); chocolate sprinkles.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake white. Add yellow mints, arranged in two circles but leaving a space in the center. Sprinkle chocolate jimmies in the center, guiding them with your hand or a funnel.

Baseball season is officially underway. I know because my husband is already yelling at the TV. Here’s a classic way to make cupcakes that look like baseballs. The trick is to use even pressure when you’re piping the lines, and stop squeezing before you pull away.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; red icing in premade tube; plastic round tip or metal tip #2 and coupler.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake white. Using even pressure, pipe two curved lines as shown, and on top of them pipe V shapes for the baseball stitching.