DIY trendy cupcakes

I don’t need an excuse to eat cupcakes—though I have circled Dec. 15 on my calendar as National Cupcake Day so I’m sure to celebrate with one of these cute, little portion-controlled cakes.

But the prices of trendy bakery cupcakes has motivated me to get out my cupcake tins and whip up my own batches. For inspiration, I found hellocupcakebook.com (from the same folks who wrote the best-seller "Hello Cupcake!" (Houghton-Mifflin) by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson. I picked some nice tips I’d like to pass along:

• Take out the plastic. Instead of buying pastry bags and tips, use zippered plastic bags. Snip a little opening in the corner, fill it with batter, then close the top and squeeze the batter into your paper-lined tins. You can also use them to pipe on frosting.

• Invest in an offset spatula. The angled blade keeps your fingers from smudging up your frosting, and comes in handy when you’re working with a lot of cupcakes—say for a bake sale.

• Shop at the gas station. The authors say gas stations have the best selection of candy and little edible doodads to decorate your little cakes.

• Think pink! This is my own trick. I’ve made a lot of cupcakes for school bake sales in my day, and the pink frosted ones have always sold the best. A pretty, pastel yellow shade is a close second.

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