Christmas Cupcakes

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year, and none is complete without a batch of homemade Christmas cupcakes. Decorating cupcakes for Christmas is one of my favorite things to do. I love the Christmas colors and there are so many wonderful themes to choose from for you Christmas cupcakes! Just thinking about it, I don't know how I would cover all of my ideas in just one post, so this might be a 2 part post.
First let's cover what we all know and love - Christmas colors. If you're unsure how to decorate and frost cupcakes for Xmas, you can't go wring with red, white, and green. My favorite Christmas cupcakes, and the ones that always get the biggest smile, are my winter themed ones. Let's get started.

1. Winter Christmas Cupcakes or Easy Snowman Cupcakes
For this you will need: cupcakes, white icing, sugar or coconut flakes, marshmallows, pretzel sticks, chocolate covered peanut cups, chocolate sprinkles, fruit roll up for the scarf, and orange or red gummy fish.
These Christmas Cupcakes are so simple to make, I've been doing it since I was a child! First you must choose your cupcake base. Red velvet cupcakes are always a great option for Christmas, seeing as they're red, but any cupcake base can work and you should be able to find a great deal of recipes on my site! After you bake your Christmas cupcakes base, you should wait for them to cool. For these cupcakes, I use any white frosting. You can choose from buttercream frosting, boiled frosting, or cream cheese frosting. For this purpose I'll go with buttercream. Frost your cupcakes so that they have a flat top. I usually use two marshmallows for the snowman but if you want to use three, that will work two. I place one in the center of my cupcake. Thank I dab some frosting on it. Then I cut off about a quarter of the second marshmallow and place the 3/4 piece ontop of the first. I dab some frosting on the top and place a small peanut butter cup. If it's too big, cut it in half! For the snowman's scarf, take a fruit rollup and cut a thin strip. It should be about four or five inches long. Wrap it around the snowmans neck and secure one end over the other with some frosting. Now wet a toothpick and stick your snowman three times for buttons and twice for eyes and a few more times for a smile. That is where you will put the sprinkles. For the nose simply cut off the end of a gummy fish. Last, sprinkle some sugar over it, or coconut flakes, for a fresh snow look. These Christmas cupcakes are sure to be a hit with everyone!

2. Christmas Cupcakes - Christmas Trees!
This decorating idea is a little more complicated than the first one but the end result is really wonderful and you can play around with these Christmas cupcakes making them as festive as you want.
What you need: Cupcakes, Waffle cones, White frosting, small candies, pastry bag with a star tip.
For this recipe I would go with vanilla cupcakes or chocolate cupcakes, but any cupcake will do. I prefer chocolate. Bake your cupcakes and wait for them to cool. For the frosting you can either keep it white or put some green food dye in it. I would keep it white, but to each his own. When the cupcakes have cooled, put a flat layer of frosting on top of each cupcake. I like cream cheese frosting for these. Now take a waffle cone and place it upside down on top of the cupcake. Fill your pastry bag with frosting squeeze out small stars all around the cone. It gives the appearence of a snow covered Christmas tree! If you want you can leave it as so. Or you can go ahead and decorate your tree however you like.

That's all I have for now, but I promise in the next two weeks I'll be right back here with two more cupcake decorating ideas for your Christmas Cupcakes!

Pink Frosting

photo credit: jspad

Lately I have gotten a few requests for a pink frosting recipe. I'm not really sure what is means by pink frosting, but I'll give it a go and give you a few options for topping your cupcakes with the pinkest frosting on this side of the Ecuador.

Pink Frosting Ideas:

If you are making regular buttercream frosting, turning it into pink frosting is a piece of cake (no pun intended). One of the great things about buttercream frosting is an ability to turn it virtually any color you'd like! So, to make pink frosting just add two drops of red food coloring or red food dye into the frosting after the recipe is completely. Mix it in and viola! If you'd like a deeper pink frosting, add another drop or two, and if you'd like a lighter pink frosting start of with just a drop. Easy as pie.

Another option is to add a splash of beet juice to the frosting. This is a great option because red food dye can be hazardous to your health and contains dangerous chemicals. Adding beet juice will also give you pink frosting and I suggest you use this method over the other. You make this pink frosting the same way: by adding a splash of beet juice to the frosting once it is completed. Beet juice can be very strong so be wary.

If you want a fruity pink frosting you have many options. Crushed raspberries create an amazing pink color and I've often used them to color frosting. Adding a handful of crushed raspberries will give you a nice pink frosting and give the flavor a little kick! You could also use cherries for pink frosting. Frozen cherries will add a nice color to the frosting, as well. And last but not least you could make your pink frosting using strawberries. Crushed or cut up, they'll definitely give you the color you want. Strawberries don't run as much as raspberries and cherries, so you'll probably have to use more to get the pink frosting you desire. Any of these will work fine, though.

Creating pink frosting is easy and you could use food dye to create any color frosting you desire, using the same method. For lighter, more pastel frosting use less and for deeper and richer colors use more. It's really simple and gives your cupcakes the pizazz you might be looking for.

Pink frosting is perfect for Valentine's day, bridal showers, baby showers, and birthdays for girls and women alike! No one doesn't like pink frosting and it really does it's job topping off your vanilla cupcakes. I hope your pink frosting is a hit!

Cupcake Cakes

photo courtesy: Bev (sugarbloom cupcakes)



Cupcake Cakes: What are they? Where do I get them? How do I make them?

Cupcake cakes are probably exactly what you are picturing. It's not a big cake in the shape of a cupcake (yes, that exists too but it isn't what we're talking about). Cupcake cakes are seen most of the times at special events and holidays, namely weddings and sweet sixteens and birthdays. A lot of bakeries also use cupcake cakes to display their cupcakes.

So, in case you still don't know, a cupcake cake is simply many things. Cupcakes placed on a cupcake stand in the shape of a cake can be a cupcake cake. Sometimes there will be a small cake on top of the stand, but more often than not cupcake cakes are really just cupcakes. Cupcake cakes are also cupcakes placed down in the shape of something to create a shape, such as a snake, or numbers.

If you would like to know how to make cupcake cakes, here are some tips that are sure to help you out. As your base for your cupcake cakes, you should always use a cake board, or some kind of cardboard, wrapped in foil. This will make it easier to move your cupcake cakes, otherwise you'll have cupcakes falling all over the place.

Before you begin making your cupcake cakes, it would probably be wise to take a moment and decide what exactly it is you are doing. Map it out. Get a sketch book and sketch! Do the math, take measurements, make sure you have the right tools. While making cupcake cakes isn't brain surgery, it will be a lot easier if you know what you're doing before you do it.

My last piece of advice is to leave the cupcakes in the cupcake liners. While this may seem contradictory to the idea of a cake, your cupcake cake will have better presentation if you leave them in the liners. Also, to keep the cupcakes in place, it helps to put a little dollop of frosting beneath each one. It will make your cupcake cakes stable and magnificent!

With cupcake cakes, there really is no right and wrong way to go about doing things. Get creative and make it your own. As far as frosting the cupcake cakes go, there are many ways to do that, too. First you must decide whether or not you want your cupcake cakes to look like cupcakes, or to look like a cake. I prefer the cupcakes, but whatever floats your boat! The trick to frosting your cupcake cakes is to treat it how you want it to turn out. If you want each individual cupcake to stand out on its own, then decorate each one separately. But if you want the cupcake cake to appear as though it is one cake, treat it as a whole and don't think about each cupcake separately. Again it would be wise to map out the frosting and decorations for your cupcake cakes, especially if you want them to look more like cakes.

You may be wondering what the advantages are to having cupcake cakes over a regular cake. Well, I'll tell you. First of all, cakes are boring. We've seen them before and we want something different! Cupcake cakes are cute and unique and add a nice twist to the celebration. Another advantage of cupcake cakes is portion control. No worrying about cutting pieces of the cake and making sure they're the right size. Cupcakes are a no hassle kind of dessert.

So sit back and enjoy your cupcake cakes and come back soon for more recipes and cupcake ideas!

4th of July Cupcakes

photo credit: bakingbites.com

With summer right around the corner, my favorite holiday is just about to hit. The 4th of July will yield many barbecues and other festivities and none is complete without some special 4th of July cupcakes!
Here are some great ideas for 4th of July cupcakes and frosting and decorating.

4th of July cupcakes take 1. If you're a naturalist like me, then you hate food dye. This makes baking and decorating 4th of July cupcakes difficult since we all know that you can't have 4th of July cupcakes that don't represent the red, white, and blue. This is why I'm starting off here, because if you can avoid chemically enhanced cupcakes then you should. For these 4th of July cupcakes you can use either a chocolate cupcakes, a vanilla cupcake, or a red velvet cupcake (using beet juice of course!). If you want to make these 4th of July cupcakes with vanilla cupcakes but you want the cake to be red, you can add a little beet juice in place of water. Beet juice is strong so careful!
For 4th of July cupcake I like to use vanilla frosting. That will be your white in your red, white and blue. 4th of July cupcakes should be festive, so use a vanilla frosting, cream cheese frosting, or boiled frosting and lather up those cupcakes! Now you may be wondering where your red and blue come in if you're not going to use food dye. Luckily the 4th of July is in the summer and fruit and summer go hand in hand. Decorate your 4th of July cupcakes with blueberries and raspberries. Or decorate your 4th of July cupcakes with strawberries instead of raspberries. Voila! If you want red icing, use beets! You will have marvelous natural 4th of July cupcakes that everyone will enjoy. A nice way to decorate is to make a swirl or circle of blueberries and stick a strawberry with the top cut off faced down on the top of your 4th of July cupcakes. What would really make an amazing 4th of July cupcake would be chocolate covered strawberries.
Enjoy!

4th of July cupcakes take2: Now that we've covered our natural 4th of July cupcakes, lets get down to the nitty gritty. The simple truth is, if you want blue 4th of July cupcakes, use a yellow cake and blue food dye, you want red, use a red food dye. Plain and simple. The same goes for the icing that you'll be covering your 4th of July cupcakes in. I like to keep things simple with a yellow or white 4th of July cupcakes topped with white frosting or chocolate frosting and then red, white, and blue sprinkles. If you're feeling really festive, your 4th of July cupcakes can adorn an American flag make out of sprinkles. You can also create different color frosting to top your 4th of July cupcakes and do a swirl or a patter atop your 4th of July cupcakes. They'll look really cute. Experiment! 4th of July cupcakes should be crazy and explosive, not safe and refined.

No matter how you decorate your 4th of July cupcakes, I assure you people will love them. 4th of July cupcakes will make your holiday extra special.

Come back soon for more cupcake recipes!

Love,
The Cupcake Gal

Wedding Cupcakes

photo credit: clevercupcakes

Cupcakes are the perfect treat for every occasion. Whether it's an annual holiday or a special occasion, cupcakes are sure to leave a tasty impression. Cupcakes are a very popular birthday treat, and they are becoming increasingly popular for weddings. Wedding cupcakes are the new "it" wedding treat. It seems like everyone has them at their weddings these day, from celebrities to friends to family. There are many different kinds of cupcakes that people have had at their weddings. Usually what makes them "wedding cupcakes" is the way that the cupcakes are decorated from the frosting, to the cupcakes liners, to the sprinkles.

If you're planning a wedding, the key to having amazing wedding cupcakes is white or pastels. Simple and elegant always takes the cake, no pun intended. Red velvet wedding cupcakes have become really popular wedding cupcakes because the red of the cupcake on the bottom with hot white frosting looks really festive and elegant. There are many different cupcake recipes that are used in wedding cupcakes and none is right nor wrong.

I think the best way to be decorating cupcakes for your wedding is to keep it simple. Try doing half of the wedding cupcakes in white buttercream frosting and the other half in a subtle pink frosting or a lavender frosting. Both of these colors will look charming atop either vanilla wedding cupcakes or chocolate wedding cupcakes, or any other variety of wedding cupcakes you may have.
As far as sprinkles go, wedding cupcakes look nice with white or any subtle color sprinkles. If you use bold colors on your cupcakes they might look like they belong at a child's birthday party. If your wedding is color coordinated, just use the colors that go with your decorations. The cupcakes will fit right in. Also, pearl white sprinkles look so nice on wedding cupcakes. They really give the cupcakes an amazing feel.

An advantage to using cupcakes instead of cake is that you can have a few different kinds. And if you want it to be tiered like a wedding cake is, just buy a display that has tiers and it will make your wedding cupcakes fit right into the feel of your special day. If you're making them yourself you can find recipes on the internet.
Martha Stewart has amazing wedding cupcake recipes and if you're looking I would highly recommend her website for cupcake recipes. She also has ones that are specifically for wedding cupcakes so that really is your one stop. And in addition she'll give you tips on decorating and presentation.

So good luck with your wedding cupcakes and I'll see you soon for more great cupcake recipes and cupcake ideas!