Easy Cupcakes Recipes for Parties & Celebrations

Daisy Cupcakes

If you have a friend who loves flowers, why not make Daisy Cupcakes? The topping is fondant, rather than the usual frosting.

Tips for Decorating Cupcakes

Wrappers & Liners

There are lots of colourful cupcake liners on the market – choose one to compliment your cupcake theme. Or use one of my free printable cupcake wrappers to wrap around your baked cupcake – I’ve got lots of different themes available. You could also invest in reusable silicone baking cups.

Adding color to frosting

Whether you make your own frosting, buttercream, icing (or whatever you call it!), or buy it from the store; you are probably going to want to add colour. This might be to complement a party theme or the cupcake recipient’s favorite color.

It’s easy to do – just add drops of food coloring to the frosting, and mix well. Don’t forget you can always add more coloring if you need a deeper shade – but can’t take it away! Over on the Better Crocker website there 17 beautiful hues that you could try out. Each one gives you the exact amount of food color that you need.

Food coloring is available in various forms. You’re most likely to find liquid coloring in your grocery store, and other types of coloring like gels, pastes, and powders in more specialised cake decorating shops. The cheapest option is liquids, but they can alter the consistency of your frosting and cake batter, so I prefer to use pastes or gels which don’t. A little goes a long way with food coloring gels and you can usually get a much deeper shade than you would with liquids.

Sprinkles

Sprinkles and cupcakes are made for each other! I have a ridiculous amount of sprinkles in my store cupboard, and there are so many awesome sprinkles available! You’ll be able to find an assortment of cupcake sprinkles at the grocery store. And even more online, which is where I buy pretty much all of my sprinkles.

It’s good to have some basic cupcake sprinkles on hand like star sprinkles, nonpareils (hundreds & thousands), sugar strands/jimmies, sugar pearls, and confetti sprinkles. Then if you need a specific shape, have a search online and you’ll be surprised what shapes you can find!

I also really love sprinkle mixes because you get a mixture of different shapes, sizes, and colours – the best of everything in one little container!

Toppings

And then there are lots of other things you can use as cupcake toppings, both edible, and inedible. Just make sure you let your guests know they can’t eat those inedible ones!

I have shared lots of free printable cupcake toppers over the years, and they always look great added to a batch of cupcakes! Other inedible toppers I’ve used include mini rubber ducks, green army men, and animal figurines. Plus of course birthday candles, and sparklers!

I’ve mentioned fondant models as a cupcake topper, but if you aren’t confident of your skills, you can buy them ready-made, or use a silicone mold. There are so many shapes styles available like mermaid tails, unicorn horns, and flowers. Or use cookie or fondant cutters to cut various shapes like stars, hearts, or flowers to name a few.

Other toppings that are great on cupcakes include sugar flowers, edible real flowers, mini candy bars, hard candies, jelly candies, fresh fruit, cookies, dried fruit and nuts, and more.

Celebration Cupcakes

So that’s it for party cupcake recipes. But what about other celebrations?

Cupcakes for a Baby Shower

I threw a baby shower for my sister, and made two types of cupcake – Teeny Tiny Cupcakes which were baked in paper cases that you would usually serve ketchup in! And then there was Dinky Ducky Cupcakes which were store-bought cupcakes, that I topped with a swirl of pink icing and some small rubber duckies! They were so cute!

Baptism Cupcakes

Need cupcakes for a baptism? I made some for my niece’s special day – vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and topped some with dark and pale pink crosses that were cut from fondant.

Wedding Cupcakes

I also made Black, Red & White Heart Wedding Cupcakes for my sister’s big day to go with her colour scheme. My go-to cupcake recipe is so easy to scale up to make big batches of cupcakes for big celebrations.

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