Easy Cupcakes

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.

I saw Cherrios cereal used as animal ears and just had to try it myself. These tigers are super cute, and there’s no piping or other fancy stuff so they’re a “cakewalk” to make.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; icing tinted orange; 2 Cherrios; 1 mini marshmallow; 1 chocolate chip; 2 brown mini M&Ms; black gel icing; scissors.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Cut marshmallow in half and position both, sticky side down, to form tiger muzzle (cheeks). Add chocolate chip nose and mini M&M eyes. Stick 2 Cheerios in icing for ears. Use black writing icing or gel to make stripes as shown. (Mine started out as zig-zags but melted a bit.)

Having a ’50s party? Or making cupcakes with kids? These pink poodle cupcakes are quick, cute and simple.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; frosting tinted pink; pink mini marshmallows; pink mini jellybean or other small candy (for nose); black gel or writing icing; scissors.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake. Cut all but 2 mini marshmallows in half and place, sticky side down, all over cupcake except for a circle in the middle for the face. The 2 uncut marshmallows can be the dog ears. Add pink candy for nose. Use gel or writing icing to draw eyes and mouth, or use mini M&Ms or chocolate chips for eyes.

I saw a variation of this cupcake that used square graham crackers you had to dip in chocolate, let dry and perch on top of a mini peanut butter cup. The tassel was carefully crafted from fruit rolls. They were really cute, but I wanted a cupcake that I could make a bunch of quickly for my nephew’s graduation party. Here’s what I came up with:
What You Need: 1 cupcake; 1 chocolate-covered graham cracker (the Keebler elves make a good one); 1 M&M in school color; white frosting; red (or other school color) icing in tube; metal tip #2 or plastic tip sold with tubes.
How to Make It: Frost cupcake white. Perch graham cracker on top of cupcake. Use dab of icing to stick M&M on top of cracker. Draw tassel in school color.

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.

I made a batch of these cupcakes for my husband’s birthday using carrot cake mix and canned cream cheese frosting. I’m not a fan of carrot cake, but I thought these came out pretty cool, with very little effort.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; cream cheese frosting; icing tinted orange; icing tinted green.
How to Make It: I found a lot of fancy ways to make carrots using pastry bag tips, but it turns out you can make a really cool carrot just using a plastic bag with the corner cut off and “jiggling” it a bit as you draw the carrot. Make the leaves the same way, but cut a smaller hole. If you want to use metal tips, either with a pastry bag or prepackaged tube, try tip #3 for the carrot and #1 or a leaf tip for the leaves.

I’ve seen versions of these bear cupcakes in several books and magazines and finally went looking for the chocolate nonpareil wafer candies that form the muzzle for these cute cubs. Immediately, I whipped up a batch for the preschool bake sale. My 3-year-old put the “muzzle” candies on.
What You Need: 1 cupcake; chocolate frosting; chocolate nonpareil (white sprinkles) candy; red hot cinnamon imperial candies; red icing or gel (I just used Wilton icing in a premade tube with a #3 tip and coupler.)
How to Make It: Frost cupcakes. Place chocolate nonpareil in center. Use red to “draw” on a mouth as shown. Immediately (so it will stick) place red hot candy for nose and 2 for eyes. If you want, you can add cookies (such as mini Oreos or mini Nilla wafers) for ears.