Easy Cupcakes

I first saw the lollipop flower concept in a magazine — I think Martha Stewart’s. I used Airheads candy to make the leaves, but you could use Starburst, spearmint gum or even spearmint leaves.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; green sugar; 2 Dum Dums (or other round) lollipops; green Airheads or other moldable candy (or cut up green gum or gumdrops).

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Sprinkle with green sugar for grass. Stick two unwrapped lollipops or suckers, staggered, in top of cupcake. With clean hands or gloves, mold Airheads into leaf shapes (pointy ovals) and place near bottom of flowers.

Three bluebirds await their mama bird in a nest on this cupcake, which features toasted coconut.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted green; toasted coconut; 3 pastel blue M&Ms; food-safe markers.

How to Make It: Toast coconut for 5-10 minutes in 350-degree oven. Let cool. Frost cupcake green. Sprinkle center with coconut for nest. Use food-safe markers to draw eyes and beak on each M&M. Arrange birds in nest.

Use candies of various shapes and sizes to make dragonfly, butterfly and bug cupcakes. Go with pastels or bright colors, but whatever you do, have fun!

What You Need: 1 cupcake; green frosting; assorted candies such as jellybeans, Jordan almonds and candy-covered mints; food-safe pens.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Arrange candies on top. For dragonfly shown, make row of three pink jellybeans and position yellow Jordan almonds on each side for wings. Draw 2 black “eyes” on round candy and add for face.

With candy-coated chocolate eggs, or pastel M&Ms, you can make spring butterfly cupcakes in seconds.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted green; 4 pastel candy-coated chocolates; green (or black) writing icing or gel.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Arrange candies as wings. (You can also decorate the wings with sprinkles or icing if you’d like). Use gel or writing icing to draw body and antenna.

Use jellybeans and a round candy to arrange a spring flower and finish it off with piped leaves.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; green frosting; 6 yellow (or any color) jellybeans; 1 orange (or any color) candy for center (I used a Runt); pastry bag and leaf tip, or tubed icing with leaf tip.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake white. Arrange 6 jellybeans around center candy to form flower shape. Add green leaves.

All it takes is pastel colored candy corn and M&Ms (available around Easter time, or at specialty shops) to make pretty flower cupcakes.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; 7 pastel candy corns; 1 pastel M&M.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Place M&M upside down in the center of the cupcake. Surround with candy corn, alternating colors, with the white tips facing inward toward the M&M center.

You’ll need to break out the decorating tips for this cupcake, but making daisies is easy, I promise! You don’t even have to have a pastry bag and metal tips. Just buy a tube of white icing (Wilton and CakeMate makes them) and the plastic, four-tip set. One of those is a “rose” tip: wide at one end and thinner at the other.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted green; frosting tinted yellow; white frosting; pastry bag and metal tips #104 and #3, or prepackaged tube and tips. (I used royal icing, so my daisy is hard and crunchy. But you can use regular icing and make the daisy right on your cupcake.)
How to Make It: Frost cupcake green. Use round tip to draw trellis pattern (grid) on top of cupcake. Practice making daisies on waxed paper (you can reuse the icing) before making one directly on your cupcake. Hold bag or tube with tip #104 perpendicular or at a slight angle (daisies are very forgiving), with the wide end of the tip facing either directly away from you or directly toward you. Start about 1 1/2 inches out from what will be the center of your daisy, squeeze, and ease up on pressure as you pull tip toward center. Repeat around. Use #3 tip to pipe yellow center.