If you signed up to bring treats to your child’s classroom on Valentine’s Day, cupcakes are a sure hit. There is no need to spend too much time on complicated decorations with these easy ideas.
First, if you bake the cupcakes yourself, use a cake mix. You might be tempted to bake something from scratch, but if you’ve ever seen a classroom full of fourth-graders wolfing down cupcakes, you can see that they might miss the subtleties of Grandma Ruby’s lemon curd confections. It’s the frosting and decorations that count.
If you buy cupcakes from the store, you can still dress them up a little with these ideas to make them something a little extra special.
1. Print Valentine designs from your computer, or buy a pack of the cheap, small cardboard Valentines. Use a hole punch to punch a hole in the top and bottom of each card. Thread the card on a coffee stirrer or other food-safe pick. (I found a box of 500 at the dollar store.) Add a little curling ribbon in the end of each stirrer (Poke it down inside with a toothpick) for an extra touch.
2. Press a cinnamon jelly heart, large-size conversation heart, or foil-wrapped hearts or other candy in the middle of each cupcake. Sprinkle on colored cake sprinkles.
3. Buy a box of strawberry Pocky (Japanese cookie sticks) and poke a couple in each cupcake. You can find Pocky at almost any supermarket in the Asian foods section. Put the pocky in the cupcakes right before the party so they don’t absorb moisture from the cake overnight. Alternately, stick a couple of strawberry wafer cookies in each cupcake.
4. Color some coconut pink and sprinkle it on the cupcakes. To do this, put the coconut in a bag with a seal, and add a few drops of red food coloring. Seal the bag shut and shake it up until the coconut is evenly coated with the food coloring.
5. Buy a squeeze tube of frosting and make and X or an O on each cupcake, so each is either a hug or a kiss. If you can find foil-wrapped red lips, put one of these on each of the cupcakes, too. Otherwise, use Hershey’s kisses and hugs.