Easy Cupcakes

If you don’t worry about being perfectly accurate with your cupcake mammals, this pawprint cupcake could pass for a bear, dog, cat or other creature.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; 1 mint patty (such as Necco); 3 Junior Mints.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Arrange 3 Junior Mints above large mint.

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.

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.

The standout feature of these cute lion cupcakes is in the mane. You’ll need a star tip (#22 is good), but making the mane is easy.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; yellow frosting (I used Pillsbury Spring frosting in a can); pastry bag and metal star tip, or use icing in a tube; 1 light pink and 2 dark pink jelly beans; chocolate sprinkles; 2 small green candies (these are by CakeMate, in the grocery store’s cake decorating section.)

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use star tip to pipe long stars around the edge of the cupcake, and then repeat farther inward on the cupcake. Don’t stop squeezing as you pull away, so the ends of the stars will have pointy tips. Place pink nose, green eyes and 4 chocolate sprinkles for face. Add 2 dark pink jelly beans for ears.

Grrreast for a jungle or zoo party, or any time you want to “stick your neck out” when making cupcakes, consider these fun giraffe cupcakes.

What You need: 1 cupcake; yellow frosting; 2 thin pretzel sticks, 2 puffy cereal pieces (such as Cocoa Puffs or Kix); 1 pink Necco wafer; thin black licorice or black writing icing; 2 mini chocolate M&Ms; food-safe pens. (Instead of pens, you can try writing icing.)

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Use dab of icing to attach puffy cereal to tips of pretzels. (You may want to cut the pretzels to make them shorter.) Let dry for a bit. Use food-safe pen to draw nostrils and mouth on Necco wafer. Arrange 6 licorice strands (or draw 6 lines with writing icing) for stripes and place wafer on top of them. Add M&M eyes. Insert pretzel horns.

My friend’s sweet little girl is having a puppy-themed birthday party and I suggested these easy puppy dog cupcakes. The ears and tongue are made from cutup fruit rolls!

What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; red fruit roll; Junior Mint, malt ball or other round brown candy; 2 blue mini M&Ms; scissors.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Cut fruit roll into ear and tongue shapes (you can do this freehand with kid-safe scissors or–adults only–a knife, and you can make a template from paper or cardstock first if you need to.) Bend short ends of ears slightly and insert each near top of cupcake. Add tongue to bottom. Place chocolate in center and add eyes. There are lots of variations you could make. Use white frosting and black gel icing for Dalmatian cupcakes and so on.

All you need are candies for these cute and quick panda bear cupcakes.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white frosting; 2 black (licorice) Necco wafers; 2 black M&Ms; 2 white jellybeans; 1 black jellybean; bit of red string licorice.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Place M&Ms near top for ears. Use dab of icing to attach white jellybeans to Necco wafers for eyes. Add black jellybean nose and licorice mouth.