Decorate Cupcakes for Easter

Make single serving desserts for everyone at your family gathering when you decorate cupcakes for Easter. Cupcakes are a fun, pre-portioned alternative to creating a large decorated cake. Ideas for design can be so simple that kids can help, while others show off your decorating skills on a smaller scale.

The Easter bunny is a beloved icon of the holiday. Creating bunny cupcakes is simple if you have the right supplies. Try one of the following bunny design ideas:

• Cover a cupcake in buttercream frosting. Sprinkle coconut flakes across the top to represent the fur. Add jellybeans for the eyes and pipe whiskers and ears with a stiff buttercream frosting.
• Frost a cupcake with buttercream frosting in white or even light pink. Roll white and pink fondant out to one-quarter inch thickness. Place a bunny face or bunny shaped cookie cutter on top of the fondant and press down. Put it on top of the frosted buttercream layer. You can use the simple outlines, or cut out details for a more intricate design.
• Unwrap small chocolate candies shaped like bunnies. Place them on top of a cupcake frosted with buttercream, cream cheese or whipped cream icing.

You can also make a large decorated Easter bunny cake out of cupcakes. Arrange cupcakes on a large cake board to resemble the shape of an Easter bunny face. Frost them all at the same time with buttercream frosting and add details. Now you have a pull-apart cake made using cupcakes.

The bunny isn't the only animal associated with Easter. Spring chicks are a common sight for the holiday, so create cupcakes with chicks on top for a variation on bunny cupcakes. Follow these directions for making a cupcake with a chick:

1. Bake a batch of golden sweet cakes or yellow cake cupcakes and allow them to cool.
2. Cover the top of the cupcakes in buttercream frosting, tinted yellow.
3. Place a large marshmallow on top of the frosting and cover it in the yellow buttercream.
4. Using Wilton piping tip number five, add black eyes made of buttercream frosting to the front of the marshmallow.
5. Add an orange jellybean or chocolate candy for the beak of the chick.
6. Add orange jellybeans, candies or use orange buttercream frosting to make feet at the bottom of the marshmallow chick.

Receiving an Easter basket is a fun part of the day for kids of any age. Consider ways to decorate the cupcakes that use the basket for inspiration.

Kids enjoy helping out in the kitchen, so let them help with this basket Easter design.

1. Bake cupcakes, allow them to cool and frost with green buttercream icing.
2. Give kids assorted candies in the shape of Easter eggs, chocolate candy-coated minis and jellybeans. Allow them to put as many as they want on top of the green icing.
3. Cut licorice ropes into small pieces.
4. Place each end of the rope on the opposite side of the cupcake, creating a "handle" for the basket.

Even though you are making cupcakes, you can still show off your professional decorating skills. Make Wilton's spring basket cupcakes for a pretty display. Take it a step further by taking the liner off the cupcakes and doing the basketweave piping around the entire cupcake. Present each cupcake on individual platters for a beautiful spring dessert.

Even if you want to skip making an bunny cupcake, chick cupcake, or basket cupcake, you can still make plenty of cupcakes for an Easter celebration. Try one of these alternative ideas to decorate cupcakes for Easter:

• Bonnet season cupcakes from Wilton are cute hats made out of rolled fondant and placed on top of cupcakes.
• Form butterflies out of gum paste and put on top of each cupcake.
• Food Network's little lamb cupcake tells you how to make a lamb cupcake design using mini-marshmallows.
• Top your cupcake with fondant flowers in pretty spring pastel colors.
• Make mini-egg sugar cookies, decorate, and place upright on top of a cupcake covered in green buttercream, piped with the grass tip.

Decorating cupcakes for an Easter celebration is something that anyone can do. From a simple basket design kids can make to a pull-apart cupcake bunny cake, plenty of cake designs for cupcakes will fit into your spring dessert menu.

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