Rainbow Frosting Cupcakes

One of my favorite frosting techniques is rainbow swirl frosting, and I think you’ll be surprised how easy it is to do. Next to sprinkles, swirl frosting is one of my favorite ways to decorate birthday cakes, rainbow cupcakes, and cookies. You can use any colors you want to dye frosting – I’ve used this same method to make Unicorn Cupcakes!

Make my rainbow cake with this colorful frosting and you’ve got an explosion of rainbows for any party. You can use my homemade American buttercream recipe or even cream cheese frosting for this (or use a can of frosting, I won’t tell). Kids and adults alike with love this frosting! It’s so pretty you can’t help but smile.

Ingredients Needed

• Vanilla Buttercream Frosting: For the best flavor, use my homemade recipe, or three cans of store-bought white or vanilla frosting.
• Food Coloring: Gel coloring is the best for getting bright and vibrant colors. I usually use americolor gel food coloring but Wilton works too.
• Cupcakes, Cookies, or Cake: Use your favorite vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes or anything you want to decorate with the frosting. Use colorful cupcake liners for even more rainbow fun!

I used the colors of the rainbow for this recipe. If you can’t find all of these colors, you can follow the instructions on the box and mix the ones you have to create the colors you want.

Ingredients Needed

• Brownie Mix: Use a standard size brownie mix made for a 9×13-inch pan.
• Vegetable Oil: You can also use melted unsalted butter.
• Frosting: Use any kind of frosting you want – canned or homemade frosting.

Easy Halloween Cupcakes Anyone Can Make

I am so excited to share these quick and easy Halloween cupcakes with you today! If you’ve been looking for cupcake ideas for a Halloween party, I’ve created five different sweet cupcake toppers that are so easy anyone can make them.

Basic Ingredients

• You will need 24 cupcakes baked and cooled. You can make any flavor you like!
• You will also need two batches of homemade vanilla buttercream frosting, or you can use four cans of vanilla frosting instead.
• Depending on which cupcakes you make, you may need some chocolate frosting, which you can make or use store-bought. Peanut Butter frosting is great too, depending on what design you’re making.

Basic Supplies

• Piping bags
• Wilton piping tips (see the list under each design for specific tips)
• Gel food coloring
• Oreo cookies
• Candy eyes (I’m a total sucker for Halloween cupcakes with eyes!)

These are just the general items you will need for all of the cupcake designs. Be sure to note the specific items for each design, including piping tips, frosting colors, and candy or cookies.

How to Make Jack-O-Lantern Cupcakes

• Orange gel food coloring
• Green gel food coloring
• ½ can chocolate frosting or use black food coloring
• Wilton #47 tip
• Wilton #5 tip
• Wilton #106 tip
• If you use my pumpkin cupcakes recipe you’d have pumpkin flavored Pumpkin Halloween Cupcakes!

How to Make Witch Cupcakes

• Green gel food coloring – Color about two cups (or one can) of frosting green.
• Purple gel food coloring
• Wilton Open Star Tip: 1M tip
• Oreo cookies for the base of the hat
• Hershey’s Kisses to make the tip of the hat

How to Make Spider Cupcakes

• White frosting
• Chocolate frosting for the legs using a Wilton #5 tip
• Oreos for the base of the spider body.
• Candy Eyes

How to Make Monster Cupcakes

• Purple and/or gel food coloring (or any colors)
• Wilton Open Star Tip: 1M tip
• Candy eyes – They’re spooky halloween cupcakes with eyes!!

How to Make Copycat Mickey Halloween Cupcakes

These are also called Mickey Candy Corn Cupcakes!

• Orange and Yellow gel food coloring
• Wilton Open Star Tip: 1M tip – you’ll want to frost the cupcakes in the order of the candy corn colors: yellow then orange then white.
• Chocolate candy melts or mini Oreos to make the Mickey ears.

Makes 4 Red Velvet Cupcakes

I love this red velvet recipe because they are small batch! If you don’t know, a small batch means that this recipe makes a smaller amount than usual. This recipe makes 4! It is so good because if you have a small group, you do not need to make an excessive amount of cupcakes!

Red velvet is always so fun because of how pretty they are. And they taste great too. They are so versatile and great for any event you have coming up! I’ve done all the math for you so you can make a small batch of cupcakes without having to divide or do fractions!

Easy Halloween Cupcake Decoration

When I was young my mom’s favorite Halloween costume was a witch. She’d paint her face green and wear a big hat and cackle to all the kids that came to the door. She has the BEST witch cackle I’ve ever heard – and whenever I look at these cupcakes, I remember Halloween at home with her.

These are the EASIEST but most fun Halloween Cupcakes to make: they look like Witches Cauldrons! The black cupcake liner is the cauldron, with the green frosting bubbling out full of all the things witches love: eyes, bats, bugs and skeletons!

How to frost Witch Cupcakes

Now you could make yourself a batch of my vanilla buttercream but I went the semi-homemade route for these cupcakes.

To frost 24 cupcakes I recommend 2-3 smaller cans of their icing (if you’re shopping in a store) or grab one of the large 4 pound tubs if you’re ordering online, and use about half to three-quarters of it.

Disposable piping bags are one of my favorite kitchen tools and I always have boxes of them in my baking pantry. To prepare for frosting, fit your piping bag with a coupler and tip. To achieve the kind of piled look I did for my cupcakes I recommend a #12 tip, but you can use any you like.

To get the NEON GREEN frosting for my Halloween Cupcakes I used 3 drops of blue and 25 drops of yellow. Having an exact ratio like that makes it foolproof for whipping up more frosting if you run out, and it makes it easy to get the color you want.

Cauldron Cupcakes are a fun and easy creative Halloween Cupcake for kids! The easy decoration is done with green frosting and lots of different sprinkles to look like a witch cauldron, perfect for a spooky celebration.

This post was sponsored in 2020 by Wilton to showcase some of my favorite products, and all opinions are my own. They have some of my favorite sprinkles to use in all my recipes, especially for Halloween.

Cake Mix Almond Cupcakes

I love almonds so much, that’s why I made this recipe to have such a tasty almond flavor. This recipe uses toasted almonds and almond extract to perfect the flavor. And if you want to go one step further, you can use almond milk to create an almond trifecta. 

On top of all that, this caramel frosting I used to top these cupcakes is one of the best frostings I have ever made. I got this recipe from my mother-in-law; she’s been making it for years. It’s a cooked frosting and is thick and rich and perfect with the cupcakes.

Ingredients Needed

• Toasted almonds: Buy slivered almonds. Learn how to toast nuts properly.
• Yellow or white cake mix: This is the base of the cupcake recipe – any brand works.
• Milk: Any kind of milk is fine (regular or nondairy).
• Almond extract: Gives the most of the almond flavoring so don’t skip it!
• Butter: You need unsalted or salted butter for the caramel frosting – no substitutions!
• Packed brown sugar: Makes the rich caramel when mixed with butter
• Powdered sugar: Gives the body to the frosting. Yep – it’s sweet!

How to make almond cupcakes 

• Toast almonds by placing them in a frying pan and cooking over medium-low heat, stirring constantly and not walking away from the stove, until light golden brown. Remove to a plate or bowl to cool.
• Place ½ cup of the toasted almonds in a food processor and grind until they are finely ground. Reserve remaining almonds for topping.
• In a large bowl, beat cake mix, milk, oil, eggs, and almond extract with an electric mixer on low for 30 seconds. Turn the mixer up to medium and beat for two minutes. Fold in ground almonds.
• Divide batter evenly amongst cupcake liners (about ⅔ full). Bake 20-25 minutes at 350°, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely, about 30 minutes.

How to make caramel frosting

• Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in brown sugar and heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low and boil and stir for 2 minutes.
• Stir in milk. Heat back to boiling then remove from heat. Cool to lukewarm, about 30 minutes.
• Place the pan in a bowl of ice water and add the powdered sugar.
• Beat with a spoon until the frosting is smooth and spreadable, being sure to scrape the bottom of the pot while stirring. Remove pot from ice bath.
• Frost cupcakes immediately and top with remaining almonds. The frosting will set and dry and stiffen up quickly so plan to frost the cupcakes as soon as the frosting is done.

Best Brownie Cupcakes From Scratch

Making these Brownie Cupcakes will give you a rich, chocolatey, and fudgy brownie in cupcake form, which makes them even more fun. This recipe is very similar to my regular brownie recipe, but a bit easier. 

The greatest thing is that brownies go with so many flavors, therefore when it comes to topping the cupcakes–your favorite frosting is sure to go great with the brownie taste! At the end, you’ll be left with 11 cupcakes…seems like just enough to try out multiple new frostings!

Ingredients Needed

• Vegetable Oil – I go back and forth between using melted butter and oil in brownies. For the cupcakes, I find oil is best.
• Unsweetened Cocoa Powder: Gives that chocolate flavor – you can use regular cocoa powder or Dutch process cocoa.
• Baking Powder: I find that adding a bit of baking powder makes these more like cupcakes – that way they’ll rise a bit.
• All-Purpose Flour – be sure to measure your flour correctly.

How to make Brownie Cupcakes

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cupcake pan with liners.
• Stir together oil, sugar, and cocoa. Stir in eggs, vanilla extract, baking soda, and salt. Carefully stir in flour.
• Fill liners about ⅔ full (about 3 tablespoons of batter each).
• Bake for 20-30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean from right along the edge of the liner. Cool completely before frosting.
• Store in refrigerator loosely covered, serve at room temperature.

Easy Pumpkin Chocolate Cupcakes

Chocolate pumpkin cupcakes with cake mix are the cupcake recipe you need for all of the last-minute dessert requests. You know, like at the start of the school year when the demand for baked treats goes off the charts and you find yourself with only a few hours to pull something – anything! – together.

That’s been me many times and more than once I’ve been tempted to just pick up cupcakes at the store, but then I figured out a way to doctor-up cake mix to make the best pumpkin chocolate cupcakes. They are so easy to make. They’re not just for fall either. Yes, they have pumpkin but you don’t really taste it. Instead, the pumpkin puree makes them so moist and delicious. They taste homemade and, unless you feel like spilling the beans, no one will think they were made with cake mix. 

Ingredients Needed

• Chocolate fudge cake mix or Devil’s food cake mix: Any chocolate flavor cake mix or brand will work
• Pumpkin puree: Makes the cupcakes super moist – make sure you use puree not pumpkin pie filling.
• Vanilla Buttercream: For the frosting! You can use my homemade vanilla frosting recipe, or buy store-bought! 

How to Make Pumpkin Chocolate Cupcakes

• Preheat oven to 350°. Line two muffin pans with cupcake liners. (I got 18 cupcakes.)
• Mix cake mix, water, oil, and eggs in a large bowl with a hand mixer for about 2 minutes. Add pumpkin and mix until combined. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full (I use an ice cream scoop for this).
• Bake 18-22 minutes, until a toothpick insterted comes out with just a few little crumbs sticking to it. Cool completely before frosting.
• To make your frosting, beat butter with mixer (hand or stand, your choice) until creamy. Slowly beat in powdered sugar (1 cup at a time). Beat in vanilla. Add 1 tablespoon of cream and mix, then add more cream as necessary to get the consistency you want. Tint with food coloring, if desired.
• Frost cupcakes and sprinkle with (or dip in) sprinkles. Enjoy!

How to make mermaid cupcakes

1. Melt the pink and blue candy melts in two separate microwave-safe bowls until melted and smooth. (Learn how to melt candy without crying!)
2. Place melted candy into one of the piping bags and snip off the tip. 
3. Pipe into the mermaid tail molds.
4. Cool down to room temperature then release them from the mold by turning them upside down.
5. Frost onto cupcakes with the desired tip from the cupcake kit. 
6. Top cupcakes with sprinkles and a mermaid tail!