Easy Cupcakes

Who needs fondant and fancy piping techniques when you have fruit rolls and mini M&Ms? These red poinsettia cupcakes will brighten up your Christmas cupcake array.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; red fruit roll; 3 yellow mini M&Ms; knife.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Using knife, cut fruit roll into 6 long triangle shapes for poinsettia petals. Arrange with wide ends toward center as shown. Place mini M&Ms in center.

Wrap up Starburst candies for a simple Christmas present cupcake. Kids will have great ideas for these — don’t stop with a teddy bear!

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; holiday sprinkles; 2 Starburst candies; fruit roll in contrasting color; Teddy Graham cookie; knife.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Sprinkle edges with holiday sprinkles. Unwrap Starbursts and cut thin strips of fruit roll to “wrap” packages before stacking on top of cupcake. Add Teddy Graham bear or other presents.

Use Nutter Butter cookies to make tasty turkeys this Thanksgiving.

What You Need: White frosting; 1 Nutter Butter cookie (you can use the whole thing or just half); 5 short lengths of colored Twizzlers licorice; small bit of red licorice or molded candy (such as Starburst or Laffy Taffy) for wattle; 2 white M&Ms; 2 mini chocolate chips.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use dab of icing to attach M&M eyes with chocolate chip eyeball to Nutter Butter. Cut or mold red wattle and stick it to the cookie. Set on cupcake. Position colorful licorice behind cookie for feathers.

A chocolate Twizzler makes a great tree! Whip up a forest of these autumn trees quickly for Thanksgiving or any fall festivities.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; yellow frosting; chocolate Twizzler licorice; candy-coated sunflower seeds; scissors.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Cut length of Twizzler to slightly shorter than width of the cupcake. Use scissors to cut about four “branches” one-half to two-thirds of the way through the Twizzler. (It’s hollow.) Spread branches apart and place on cupcake. Sprinkle and/or place sunflower seeds on tree and ground for leaves.

These yummy acorn cupcakes are a variation of a design I saw in Woman’s World magazine. (You could also use a molded Tootsie Roll to form the nut.)

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; chocolate sprinkles; Hershey’s Kiss; 1 caramel; toothpick.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake and add chocolate sprinkles around edge. Using clean or gloved hands, mold caramel into the shape of an acorn cap. Press onto wide end of Kiss. Use toothpick to press crosshatch pattern into caramel.

Shredded Wheat is the straw on these fun scarecrow cupcakes that are made using only candies and cereal — no fancy piping or icing in tubes!

What You Need: 1 cupcake; yellow frosting; chocolate (or black) Twizzler; shredded wheat (I used spoon-size); 2 black or brown M&Ms; orange chocolate covered sunflower seed (or substitute mini M&M turned sideways); black shoelace licorice; scissors or knife.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Break apart shredded wheat and sprinkle or place at top and bottom for straw. Cut Twizzler into one length almost as wide as the cupcake and another length slightly shorter. Assemble as shown for hat. Place candy eyes, nose and mouth.

Add the look of “Indian” corn to your harvest table with these easy Thanksgiving cupcakes that look like an ear of dried corn.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; yellow frosting; green sprinkles; assorted fall color Jelly Belly jelly beans; paper and scissors to make a template.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Cut a wedge shape from scrap paper to use as a template or “mask” and set it on the cupcake as you sprinkle the rest of the cupcake, forming a corn husk shape. Then remove paper and arrange jelly beans, either skinny side up (like this) or the other way.