Easy Cupcakes

All you need is some green icing to draw some hearts and create a clover shape. Don’t worry if you don’t have a pastry bag and metal tip. You can do the same thing with icing in a tube (”writing icing”) or even frosting in a plastic baggie with the tip snipped off.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white or off-white frosting; green frosting; pastry bag and metal tip #2 or one of the alternatives explained above.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake with white icing. Using the materials described above, pipe or “draw” three hearts arranged in a clover shape. Then add a stem.

Do you have candy hearts left over from Valentine’s Day? Use the green ones to make shamrocks for your St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes! (And if you bought an extra can of green frosting at Christmastime, you’re ahead of the game.)

What You Need: 1 cupcake; white or off-white frosting; 3 candy hearts (Necco, etc.) or four if you want a four-leaf clover; green writing icing with round metal tip or icing in tube; rainbow sprinkles.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Arrange hearts in clover shape. Use green icing to “draw” a stem (optional). Sprinkle rim with rainbow sprinkles.

A medium-sized star tip is the trick to these pink Valentine’s Day cupcakes, which have a heart perched on the top of each start.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; pink frosting; candy heart sprinkles; pastry bag and metal star tip (I used #21) or use tubed icing.

How to Make It: Use star tip to make pink stars all over top of cupcake. Carefully place a colored candy heart on top of each star.

For Valentine’s Day or anytime, for romance or “just friends,” these I Love You cupcakes combine chocolate and sentiment. I used strawberry-flavored frosting, so technically they also combine chocolate and strawberry.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; pink frosting; pastry bag and round metal tip (I used #4); pink conversation heart.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake with chocolate. Write “I” and “You” using pink frosting, being sure to leave room for the heart. Place heart upside-down in gap.

When someone gave me these white chocolate-covered pretzels at a party last weekend, my first thought was, “Yeah! Cupcakes!” Chocolate pretzels make great butterflies any time of the year.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; pink frosting (I used strawberry flavored in a can); 2 chocolate-covered pretzels in Valentine colors; black writing icing.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake pink. Position pretzels like butterfly wings. Use black icing to “draw” antennae between the wings.

Spice up Valentine cupcakes by simply arranging red hot candies in the shape of a heart.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted pink; red hots (cinnamon imperials).

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Place red hots on cupcake in a heart shape.

Sure, you can just use colorful gummy worms to make tasty and gross cupcakes. But there’s something about a realistic candy earthworm that adds that extra “ew” factor. It even has a segment. I used Gummy Earthworms Candy by Gummies of All Shapes, made by the Iowa-based Foreign Candy Company.

What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; crumbled sandwich cookies (such as Oreo); candy rocks; gummy worm.

How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Crush cookies (a plastic bag works great) and sprinkle on top of cupcake. Add rocks and worm. Yum!