How to Frost Cupcakes

Today we’re sharing how to frost cupcakes easily and beautifully every time! These frosting tips will make your cupcakes look like you just brought them them home from the bakery.

It doesn’t matter if you’re celebrating a birthday, a graduation, a new baby or anything in between, these frosting tips will help you make the most beautiful cupcakes for that special occasion.

Easy Cupcake Frosting Tips

Aren’t cupcakes the best? I mean seriously, you can make them for both formal and casual events, they come in a billion flavors and they are fun to decorate! What’s not to love about a cupcake?

Today I want to show you a few cupcake frosting tips and baking suggestions that I’ve learned over the years. These will make whipping up a batch of delicious, beautiful cupcakes even easier than before! Plus, you’ll be able to frost and decorate them to look like you just picked them up from your local bakery.

1. Best Cupcake Recipe

First you need to start with your favorite cupcake recipe. There are so many good ones out there. Whether they’re from scratch or you took a shortcut and used a box of cake mix, it doesn’t matter. Here are a few of our favorite recipes:

• The Best Lemon Cupcakes
• Easy Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes
• Strawberry White Chocolate Cupcakes
• Hot Cocoa Cupcakes Recipe

2. How Long to Bake Cupcakes

I think the biggest mistake you can make when baking cupcakes is over-baking them. A moist, yummy cupcake can quickly turn into a dry, crumbly average cupcake. Get familiar with your oven and find the perfect cupcake baking time. Does it typically cook things faster or slower than a package suggests?

• Early Timer – Set your oven timer for a good 5 minutes less than it says in the recipe.
• Check But Don’t Open – When it beeps, turn on the oven light and check them out. (Try to open the oven as little as possible so as not to let the heat out of the oven.
• Reset – If it looks obvious they aren’t done, then set the timer for 2 or 3 more minutes.
• Test – If it is questionable, insert a toothpick. When the toothpick comes out clean, take them out.
• Perfect Timing – You want to catch them right at the moment that the toothpick comes out clean.
• Remove – Be sure to take them out of the pan to cool right after you take them out of the oven. Cupcakes will keep baking a little if they sit in the hot pan, so they’ll brown a bit more if you leave them in. Plus, the time it’ll take for them to cool will be much longer.

3. Cupcake Baking Supplies

• Cupcake Tins – Cupcakes cook faster in darker pans, so the color of your cupcake pan can make a big difference on the cook time. Take your pans into consideration when you factor your bake time. (HERE is the tin I use. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done!)
• Filling – Fill your cupcake liners with an ice cream scoop like this one. It will lead to more uniformity in the size of your cupcakes. Follow the recipe as to how high you should fill the liner with batter. Also pay attention to how many cupcakes they say the recipe makes. I try to make sure I have the same number they say.
• Cupcake Liners – This one might just be a quirk of mine, but I only use cute, decorated cupcake liners with white cupcakes. Usually, fancy cupcake liners are wasted on dark colored cake as the paper gets ruined by the conflicting color of the batter. For chocolate cupcakes I use brown or white liners, which takes on the color brown during the baking process. Then, I’ll set my cupcakes in the decorative cupcake liners after they are baked. 

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