Happy New Year everyone! And we all know what a new year means … finding the right calender! I have been lost at work without a new calender, luckily I bought one and am not so lost. I wish I had found this calender before I had gone and purchased one in town.

2011 Cupcake Calendar – Sprinkled with Fun from Monkey Mind Design’s etsy shop

Each month has a cute design and an even cuter saying about cupcakes. My favorite is April (my birthday month) “A cupcake a day, keeps the sweet tooth away!” They also sell a Mini Cupcake Calender as well.

A massive happy new year to you all!  Have a fantastic time, and catch you in 2011 for more cupcakes!

These wonderful new years cupcakes are some of the best that I have seen, I love all the bright colors that Anita Jamal has used!

After all my Christmas baking I’m giving cupcakes a miss over New Years, instead I am happy to let someone else do the cooking and just kick my heels up!

So you dazzled them with your cupcakes on Christmas day and now you need to come up with something new, something not so cupcakey, so how about a mini cupcake triffle?

These cupcake triffles are from Courtney’s Sweets blog and I found them when surfing the web to find a way to turn my unfrosted excess cupcakes into something ‘unique’ for a dinner party we are having tonight.  So this is the perfect recipe, but I have one recipe addition, alcohol (for the adults), it is a dinner party after all and the kiddies want more cupcakes!  So I will add Baileys to some, Kahlua to some and this orange liquor we have to some others.  To identify each, I’ll add a chocolate chip, a coffee bean or a Jaffa!  Totally sorted!

Happy Boxing Day!

Move over cakepops, mince pies want a piece of the stick!

Ha!  I love these, actually when trying to come up with a heading for the post I originally typed Mince Poppies, but thought it gave the wrong message and transposed it!

I have excellent news, one of my fave bloggers is back doing that which she does best, baking and blogging!  The Lone Baker is back and whipping up a Christmas flurry of flour and fruit!  There is so many good things on her website and interesting techniques, that it is often hard to choose what to feature, but today I had no doubt, it had to be these!

So not really a cake, but who doesn’t love a mini mince pie at Christmas?  And when cooked on a stick in the shape of a star?

Want to find out how to make them?  Full recipe and photo instructions are available on her website!

How adorable is this funky Merry Christmas cupcake from Bake Happy?  I love it!  You have to read her post to find out why there is a little elf stuck in a Santa sack full of presents, but when she explains it, ya kinda do find yourself nodding along!

Sometimes it is just down right unfair that I live in Australia and most of you live in America!  Otherwise I would have this little baby hanging on my Christmas tree for sure!

Apparently Hallmark started off creating miniatures in 1974 and many of those are now highly sort after collectors items.

This mixing bowl is the latest release for 2010 and will no doubt also become a collectors item some day.  You can pick these up from many stores (in America) and online by doing a search for Hallmark Merry Miniatures Mixer.

The bowl moves and says “Mixing up some holiday fun”.

So by now we should have all handed in our Christmas list to the ‘Santa’ in our life, but as I was parousing Etsy the other day for cupcake items I saw so many more things I wanted to add to my list. So here it is, My Esty Cupcake Christmas List — (CLICK ON PICTURE TO SEE ITEM)

Cupcakes Print (give cupcakes or I eat your face)

Baking Is Sexy Necklace

Coffee Cup Sleeve for Cupcake Lovers

Sweet Cupcake Necklace

pink cupcake tea towel hand printed

Pink Frosting Perfume

Have you always wanted to make ‘WOW’ cupcakes but are not sure where to start?  Well Cupcake Envy now have the answer in their latest DVD which takes you through the entire process on how to make your own bauble cupcakes.  Actually it teaches you how to make sphere shaped cakelet  designs, which really means you will be able to make baubles, hand grenades, tennis balls, basket balls, planets and anything else that is round!

I just love these, though they are so good I would love to hang them on my Christmas tree… it seems a bit wrong to just, well… eat them!

Santa Baby is one of my favorite Christmas songs to sing to and dance with. So when I found these Santa Baby Cupcake Toppers from The Gypsy Factory’s Etsy Shop I was singing extra verses of the song and dancing my lil’ cupcake shaped heart out!

Here are some more Christmas Cupcake items from The Gypsy Factory —

Red and White Stripe Christmas Cupcake Wrappers

Retro Peppermint Merry Christmas Cupcake Topper and Wrapper Set

Glam Elves Christmas Cupcake Toppers

These fondant cupcake toppers which have been crafted to look like Santa Claus’s face make decorating your cupcakes easy. For $15.00 you get a dozen fondant Santa’s handcrafted by Two Sugar Babies.  If you’re considering ordering these, hurry and place your order, because they are made-to-order they take extra time and there’s only two weeks until Christmas!

Check out these gorgeous photos! Keira’s Cakes is a small home-run business near London. Visit their website for even more cupcake beauty!

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Are you tired of flicking through hundreds of different Christmas cupcakes after doing your Google Image search, finding images you love, but no instructions?

Well rest your weary mouse and check out this one site.  It is of course the Wilton Cupcake site, and by clicking on this link here you will find loads of Christmas Cupcake ideas along with full instructions and lists of the equipment you need to make them.

As a baker I am constantly checking out this site as a way to learn new techniques and find new and interesting ideas.  This year I am loving the angels!  I have just got to buy myself that pan.. early christmas present perhaps?

Click on the images to go directly to the instructions for that cupcake.

Who else is in the process of decorating their house for Christmas? Are you looking for more ways to incorporate cupcakes into your holiday decor? Well then if you are I have found just the thing for you.

Santa and Snowman Cupcake Christmas Stocking Holder from Trendy Tree

I have to say that Trendy Tree has some of the coolest Christmas decorations and such that I have ever seen, including tons of Cupcake Ornaments. What is your favorite Christmas decoration, cupcake or otherwise that you have up for the holidays?

There are many ways to create a cupcake christmas tree, including using cupcakes on a christmas tree cupcake stand, or what I am talking about today, and that is decorating your regular every Christmas fake or real Christmas tree with cupcake decorations!

Start with heaps of tinsel, and then put up your cupcake Christmas lights if you can get them, if not go with candy cane lights, or failing that normal lights.  Then decorate all the rest of your tree with cupcake based ornaments!  Here are some cupcake decoration ideas:

• Glass Cupcake Ornaments
• Faux Cupcakes (any design, just add a little ribbon)
• Cupcake pictures adhered to pegs
• Cupcake pictures hung by ribbons
• Felt Cupcake Pouches
• Cupcake wrapper streamers (and don’t limit yourself to the Christmas tree!!!)

Happy decorating!

Oh, and one word of caution, ensure your cupcake lights are safe to use with paper if you are making paper streamers as you don’t want a cupcake bonfire!

Tis’ the season for baking and I have found just the right item to start off your Christmas baking.

Christmas Cupcake Kit found at Patina

What will you be baking for the season?

This Winter Wonderland Holiday Cupcake Decorating Kit includes everything you need to decorate 24 cupcakes.  The kit comes with 24 liners, 12 of which are silver and the other 12 are green and white carnival stripe.  For decorations, the kit has old-school reindeer, sparkling blue sugar, and white snowflakes, sugar buttons and ribbon flags.  The kit costs $12.95 and is available from BakeLab.

Yes, I know it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet but cupcake Christmas ornaments are popping up everywhere!  Our Facebook readers have been keeping me posted and I have also had many sightings myself.  So far I have seen or heard of cupcake ornaments at Kohl’s, Walmart, Target, Hobby Lobby, JcPenney and Macy’s.  Here are also I few more I found online today.

Amazon:

 Oriental Trading:

 Ebay: 

So have you had some sweet sightings?  Leave us a link or tell us where you saw them!

Given you now have only three full days left to prepare it is time to turn those ovens on!  You know that you are going to be CRAZY on Thursday so in order to ease the pressure why not bake a range of fun cupcakes for dessert instead of stressing over the pumpkin pie on the day?

In addition given you can make your cupcakes out of all those traditional thanksgiving foods such as pumpkin, sweet potato and apple, there is no reason why you shouldn’t create a Thanksgiving Cupcake bar!  Plus your kids will think it is fantastic and will probably even offer to help you with the decorating and the cleaning (well, at least the cleaning of the beaters and cleaning of the bowl parts!).

Therefore today I thought I would bring you a little Thanksgiving ‘Turkey’ inspiration!  Here are some of my favorite recent Thanksgiving turkey cupcake ideas.

Firstly I have cupcake pops.  Bakerella’s new book has put cupcake pops on top, and what child could refuse these frosting covered cute turkeys?  They have been created by Sue and Darlene of the Cupcake Project.

Next is a fantastic cupcake turkey cake.  I love this, how much fun would it be and this one from Cupcakes A Go Go is brilliant.  I am guessing that there are about 22-24 large cupcakes included in this creation!

Finally I just adore this little guy, isn’t he cute??  Mary MacAskill made this turkey using a marshmallow for the head and shredded coconut as feathers.  A beak and tail out of gummies and what could be more sweet!

The latest issue of the Hello, Cupcake What’s News letter features a Bootiful Mummy Cupcakes! The cupcakes which are by the creators of the Hello, Cupcake and What’s New Cupcake Cookbooks, have marshmallows hidden under red fruit roll-ups which looks like blood under the melted frosting.  Gory, I know but it’s Halloween after all! For tips on how to make the mummy visit the candy corner and for help with the spider webs seen in the image below check out the technique of the month and for directions look below!

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Pizzazzerie recently had a Cupcake Skewer Contest, the deadline for which has since past, but designs are still relevant to the Halloween season. The winning cupcake skewers were Black Magic Cupcakes, created by Sweet Cheeks Tasty Treats.

While she did not win the contest, The Decorated Cookie still created bright, festive Halloween cupcakes that impressed me!  Below are The Decorated Cookie’s instructions for creating Halloween cupcake skewers but for

additional directions, Pizzazzerie has a How to Make Cupcake Skewers post.

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I find the images of Belle and Boo to be absolutely adorable.  One of my favorites is the Happy Halloween print where Boo is inside a Jack-O-Lantern and Belle is dressed up like a cat.  I was excited when I came across these Halloween Parade Cupcake Wrappers available on their Etsy site. Ten decorative wrappers, which are not meant to be baked in, come in a pack for $9.50.  Belle and Boo also sells matching invitations.

Organize.com offers a selection of cupcake baking items for Halloween they have sprinkles, stencils, liners and more.  One item that I like is the set of 12 silicone cupcake molds with halloween designs.  With cute spiderwebs, bats, witches, ghosts, cats, and caldrons, the $20.99 set is a nice alternative to paper liners.

*Tip: if you buy these, bake in them once or twice before Halloween.  This will ensure the cupcakes come out of the molds easily.  When I bought my molds I didn’t realize how important this was!

Sweets for Sweetest Day by Shari's Berries

The third Saturday in October is Sweetest Day; this year that falls on October 16th. It’s a wee holiday that’s mostly celebrated up in the Great Lakes region with the giving of small gifts to loved ones. Sweetest Day originated in Cleveland, Ohio in 1922 as a PR move by a committee of Cleveland confectioners: on the first Sweetest Day, 20,000 boxes of candy were distributed to the city’s poor and unfortunate by movie stars. Admittedly, giving boxes of candy to the needy is great press, but what I take away from this is that Sweetest Day is about giving to those who need it most.

I want to advocate for a revival of Sweetest Day as a holiday where we again give to the most vulnerable among us.  Since we can all agree that cupcakes are way better/sweeter than candy, it’s pretty easy to see how we can fit our favorite baked good into this equation.  Also, from what I’ve read in All Things Cupcake, cupcake aficionados are all about uniting our favorite food with philanthropy.  This is something we do naturally – it’s no secret cupcake-lovers are sweethearts.

Celebrations of Sweetest Day can be as literal as giving cupcakes to orphans, but they could also take the form of bake sales to feed the hungry or to raise awareness about epilepsy. We’ve already seen the outpouring of cupcakes and funds in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti and Jody Hall‘s use of Cupcake Royale as a platform for social justice.   Let’s use Sweetest Day as a way to celebrate the best parts of ourselves and to use cupcakes to their greatest potential – helping our fellow human beings.

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If you decide to plan something for Sweetest Day, let us know! We at All Things Cupcake would love to hear about our readers plans to bring back what is possibly the only cupcake-related social justice holiday in existence.

Cayenne Chocolate Cupcake by Carpe Cupcakes!

National Cupcake Day was way back in March, so it’s about time for another cupcake holiday, right?  I’m pretty sure that National Chocolate Cupcake Day wasn’t created by an act of Congress, but if Cupcakes Take the Cake and National Food Holidays say it’s a holiday, that’s good enough for me.

In case chocolate isn’t your thing, National Angel Food Cake Day is October 10th, National Dessert Day is October 14th, National Candy Corn Day is October 30th, the third Saturday in October is Sweetest Day, and of course there’s Halloween. October has plenty of good reasons to bake and enjoy delicious cupcakes!

Every year, we here at ATC try to provide you with the latest and cutest cupcake costumes.  This year in my search for great new cupcake costumes I have come across a few cupcake costumes that are definitely more grown up.  I know not everyone will be interested in these cupcake related costumes, especially since they are not actual cupcakes, but there might be a reader out there who was looking for just this type of costume.

Cupcake Cutie Costume $56.95