I have always been a big fan of marble cakes. They satisfy cravings for both chocolate and vanilla cake, and always please everyone if you need to serve a crowd. They’re also not difficult to make, even though they make for a really beautiful presentation when you slice into them. All you really need to do is add some chocolate - either cocoa powder or melted chocolate - to half of a vanilla cake batter and swirl everything together.

These marble cupcakes work the same way as full sized marble cakes, just in a smaller package. The only drawback to making them this way is that you can’t really swirl them as much as you can swirl a large cake with a large amount of batter. You could try to swirl the batter in the bowl before portioning it out into the cupcake cups, but this generally leads to over-combing the chocolate and vanilla and you don’t end up with a distinct marble pattern. I prefer to measure out the chocolate and vanilla into each cupcake cup, then give the batter a quick single swirl with a knife before baking. Every cupcake ends up with the right amount of chocolate and vanilla this way, and the very distinct black-and-white swirling layers make for a beautiful contrast.

The cake is the same basic recipe that I used for my Rainbow cupcakes, except that instead of dividing it up into many small portions for food coloring, I simply added some melted chocolate to half the batter. One ounce of dark chocolate (semisweet will work, too) adds just the right amount of chocolate flavor to the mix. I used a similar technique on the icing, dividing a basic recipe and adding cocoa powder to half. I put both icings into the same piping bag so that the frosting would have a marble look to it. The wider your pastry tip is, the clearer the effect will be.

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These rainbow cupcakes are, hands down, some of the cutest cupcakes I’ve made in a very long time. The colors make the cupcakes vibrant and fun - and, frankly, they’re just too cute NOT to eat!

Although they look complicated, the cupcakes are actually very easy to make. First, you need to mix up the batter for plain vanilla or white cupcakes. Divide it evenly into 5 small bowls, then add a generous amount of food coloring to each one to create the batters for the red, orange, yellow, green and blue layers. Vibrant colors are the best thing about these cupcakes, so don’t be afraid to add a little bit extra food coloring if you don’t think that yours are strong enough. The colors should be added to the cupcake cups one at a time, working one spoonful at a time. It’s a little tedious when you compare it to a single-color cupcake, but it still only takes a few minutes to get everything into the pans.

I used a cupcake recipe that calls for oil, instead of butter, and has a fairly thin batter. I like to use this cupcake recipe for a few different reasons. First, the cupcakes are very moist. Second, since there is a relatively high ratio (compared to some, but not all other cupcake recipes) of fat to flour, you don’t need to worry too much about overmixing and making the cupcakes tough when you stir in the color. Finally, these cupcakes don’t brown too much in the oven, letting those rainbow colors really shine through. I also did not use paper liners for these cupcakes so that their colors would immediately be apparent when you looked at them. Paper liners will work fine, of course, but I would opt to grease the pan and go without, or to use silicone cupcake liners instead.

Although it has nothing to do with the color, it’s also worth mentioning that these are not too sweet, so you can pile on the frosting to top off the rainbows.

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Colorful, sugar-coated marshmallow Peeps are synonymous with Easter. They’re simple and loved by most kids. A great way to take advantage of their colorful look is to use them as a decoration for cakes and other baked goods. I’ve taken that one step further here by making Peeps-inspired cupcakes for Easter!

These cupcakes have a vanilla butter cake base and are topped with a marshmallow cream cheese frosting that is coated in colorful sugar - just like Peeps are. The vanilla cake base is easy to make and is just a great cake for a spring gathering, as it is somewhat lighter in flavor than a chocolate cupcake. The white cake also blends in with the white frosting, giving the cupcakes a more spring-like look than a darker color cupcake would. Since the major complaint of those who don’t care for Peeps straight is that the marshmallow critters are too sweet, I opted for a fluffy cream cheese frosting that incorporates marshmallow fluff. This adds a great flavor to the cupcake as a whole and does prevent the frosting from seeming too sweet when it is covered in sugar.

I’d recommend sprinkling the frosting with sugar over the sink, rather than trying to dip the frosting into a bowl of sugar. It’s easier to control where the sugar goes this way, and the frosting won’t get smushed down while you work. Peeps generally come in yellow, green and purple, so try to stick to those colors for the sugar. Use a toothpick to prop each of the Peeps up on top of the cupcakes to finish off the presentation. Leftover Peeps make great s’mores, but you can always save any leftovers for another batch of cupcakes.

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Angel food cakes are just delightful - fluffy, soft and sweet. The full size cakes are light, but sometimes you just don’t need a whole big cake. Maybe you don’t have an angel food pan, which is crucial to success in baking a full angel food cake, or maybe you don’t want to use up a dozen eggs just for the egg whites. Perhaps it’s just too much cake to have lying around the house. Whatever the reason, it’s good to know that angel food cake can be adapted into a cupcake recipe quite easily.

Angel food cupcakes are light and fluffy, just like their big brothers, but bake up in a regular muffin tin. They’re not quite as impressive to look at (small and with flat tops), but they taste great and are a yummy snack. I don’t frost angel food cupcakes because they are so soft that their taste and texture can be lost if you use too much as a topping. I opt for a simple glaze, if I’m going to top them, or leave them plain.

To dress up this batch, I mixed some chocolate to make chocolate chip angel food cupcakes. I used some bar chocolate (dark and white chocolate) and chopped it up to act as my “chips.”  Chopping up the chocolate is actually one of the most important things you need to do for this recipe before mixing them into the batter. Full-size chocolate chips can be too heavy for the delicate cake and will sink down to the bottom, causing not only an uneven distribution of ingredients, but probably causing the cupcakes to stick to the pan. Chopped chocolate - and you can use any flavor you like - will remain suspended in the cake nicely.

One other thing to keep in mind is that it is better to either use a nonstick muffin tin or very lightly grease your pan. Cupcake wrappers tend to shrink around the cake when it cools, while the cake can cling to the sides of the pan as it cools to help maintain its ultra-fluffy texture.

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With a bright, sunny-tasting recipe like this one for lemon flavored cupcakes filled with lemon curd, I’m always tempted to try and come up with a cute name for the cakes. Sunny Cupcakes. Lemon Heaven Cupcakes. Juicy Lemon Cupcakes. But I usually like to know what I’m getting when I look at the name of a recipe, so I end up coming back to the simple, but clear, Lemon Cupcakes Filled with Lemon Curd. I just dub them with a cute name when I bring them out to serve.

I was inspired to make these cupcakes after catching a few minutes of a Food Network show where a baking contestant (on the Ultimate Recipe Showdown) made something similar with a cake mix. I couldn’t resist doing a from-scratch version, just like I couldn’t resist doing a from-scratch version of the first place Double Delight Peanut Butter Cookies that won the Pillsbury Bake-Off last year.

I kept the lemon flavor in the cupcakes subtle, so that the lemon curd really has a chance to stand out, and added some vanilla into the batter, as well. A vanilla and lemon cupcake also cuts the zestiness of the curd a little and allows the whole thing to come together (so you’re not tasting a mouthful of lemon curd - not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I used the lemon curd recipe that I usually use for this batch of cupcakes, but I doubled it so that I would have plenty of curd to work with. I like a lot of curd in my cupcakes. If you don’t want to make your own, it’s perfectly fine to use store-bought lemon curd or your other favorite recipe.

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The Super Bowl isn’t a holiday, but it is one of the biggest events - sporting or otherwise - of the year. Last year, in 2008, over 97 million people tuned in to watch the Big Game. I suspect that most of those people were sitting around with family and friends, either at a small gathering or a big party. I know that I was. I love Super Bowl parties for the chance to socialize and munch on some tasty snacks. I always try to do something with a little bit of a football theme to it, just because it helps me and everyone else at the party get into the spirit (even if they’re not football fans to begin with).

This year, I’m making football-shaped mini cakes. Cupcakes didn’t give me quite the “look” I wanted, so I opted to bake a chocolate sheet cake and carve it by hand. It’s actually very quick and easy to make the football shapes. All you need to do is slice up the cooled sheet cake into bars, then trim off the corners to give them that signature shape. If you’re lucky enough to have a football-shaped cookie cutter, you can certainly use that instead. Feel free to munch on the scraps while you work.

The chocolate cake is very moist and has a great chocolate flavor. It’s tender, but holds together well enough to carve without getting crumbs all over the place. I coated my footballs with a thin chocolate glaze. You can try to dip the tops of the cake into the glaze if you like, but I’d recommend simply pouring a bit over each individual cake. The glaze is thin enough that it won’t give you a smooth finish on the sides of the football (although the top of the cake will be smooth), but I think it needed to be thin so that its flavor didn’t totally overwhelm the small cakes. I used a bit of confectioners’ sugar mixed with water to create an icing that would finish off the cakes with ball-like lacing.
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