My favorite cupcakes

I really enjoyed making these fund and easy Christmas tree cupcakes. They were so easy and my favorite way to decorate a Christmas cupcake. You need plenty of green decorator frosting, some sugar candy decorations, a large bag, coupler and a large star tip. Optional needs: chocolate chips.

Forming the trees was sort of like making an ice cream cone at the DQ. Just start in a circular motion and pipe the icing up, up, up -- until you have a little Christmas tree sitting on your cupcake. So easy. The harder part for me was picking up the little stars and decorations and gently placing them on the icing. A pair of long tweezers might have been helpful but I didn't even look for my long tweezers. I just carefully placed the tree "ornaments" all around. They don't need to be evenly spaced, just randomly placed.

On some of the cupcakes I put some white frosting to make "snow" all over the cupcake tops. Then I sprinkled them with silvered sugar and decorated the tops just like all the rest. This one is all stars with a bigger one for the top. I don't know that this might be too much frosting for some people

I used some melted chocolate chips piped around some of my cupcakes. These were chocolate-filled cupcakes and I thought the chocolate melted and piped with a small icing bag, coupler and small round tip was just the right touch.

The only problem with using large tips is that it takes roughly twice the amount of frosting. You will need a double or triple recipe. The good thing is that if you make too much icing, it can be refrigerated or even frozen with good results. Just let the frosting come to room temperature before piping.

Thanks so much to Angela McRae for taking the wonderful photos of my cupcakes.