Cute And Quirky Cupcake Creations

Whether you call them cupcakes, fairy cakes or buns, we can all agree that cupcakes (that’s what we’re going for, seeing as it’s National Cupcake Week from Tuesday September 18th to Monday September 24th) look and taste scrumdiddlyumptious.

Soft, light sponge, sometimes filled with a surprise sauce, topped with sweet, creamy icing and finished with cute sprinkles – what can be a better snack than that?

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Once upon a time, cupcakes were the fare of Gran’s kitchen, but they’ve had something of a revival in recent years, and now they’re super-trendy and super-Instagrammable.

When you’ve mastered the basic vanilla, fellow classics lemon and chocolate will easily follow, and then, the cupcake world is your oyster…

What’s better than caramel-topped crumbly shortbread finished with a smooth layer of melted chocolate? Not much, but incorporating those classic millionaire’s shortbread flavours into a cupcake is surely up there.

Baking a Mess has done just that, with a fantastic recipe for chocolate cupcakes filled with a luxurious salted caramel sauce, topped with a butterscotch buttercream icing and finished with a few crushed pieces of shortbread and extra caramel drizzle. We’re seriously drooling just thinking about it.

Turning a traditional dessert into cupcake form is a frankly genius idea in our eyes, and these sticky toffee pudding-inspired cupcakes from What Jessica Baked Next do it absolutely brilliantly.

The sticky date-filled sponge is finished with a homemade toffee sauce and toffee buttercream for what can only be described as sticky toffee cupcake heaven. Toffee-tastic (for some reason, we’re saying this in Paddy McGuinness’ voice in our heads).

Take them out of their wrappers and put them in a bowl with some custard to take this treat to a whole other level. So, so, so good.

Not everyone will be of the view that bacon belongs in a cupcake, but when teamed with maple syrup, it brings a breakfast vibe to the table. And when chocolate is thrown into the mix, like in this recipe from Waterall, your taste buds will be truly tantalised by the extraordinary blend of flavours on offer from one small cake.

Can you think of a sweeter-sounding weekend breakfast/brunch than chocolate cupcakes topped with maple syrup buttercream and pieces of candied bacon? We certainly can’t.

Gluten-free cupcake recipes are everywhere these days, so there’s no need to miss out just because you can’t eat wheat. Yay!

This strawberry and vanilla gluten-free cupcake recipe from That Girl Cooks Healthy is particularly nice, with the fresh fruit adding extra natural sweetness (and vitamins – see, cupcakes can be healthy…) to the bake. Yum.

Vegan cupcake recipes are also cropping up more and more, and Made by Luci has a great blog explaining how to make vegan Oreo cupcakes (yep, some kinds of Oreo are vegan!) that is surely too good to pass up.

The sponge is chocolate-flavoured, of course, and the frosting features actual crushed Oreos, with extra Oreos used to provide the perfect finishing touch. Enjoy with a cold glass of milk for the ultimate cookies and cream experience.

Burger? Cupcakes? What do they have to do with each other apart from falling under the umbrella of treats we really shouldn’t have too often, we hear you ask? Well, if you’re feeling up to the challenge of some show-stopping illusion baking, then why not make your cupcakes resemble burgers? Why not indeed.

Scarlett Curtis has fab instructions for how to do this for yourself, with the process involving baking vanilla cupcakes AND chocolate brownies. You slice the cupcakes in half, stuff them with the brownie slices to resemble bread buns and meat patties, then decorate with sesame seeds and some clever piped icing to complete the burger look.

Your senses will be confused and your mind will be wowed, but your tummy will be very happy that it’s had double cake.

Question: Does a rainbow unicorn cupcake really exist if it isn’t posted on Instagram? Probably not, is the conclusion we’ve come to. So, get baking these multicoloured delights from Sunday Baking and get snapping away to let all your followers know you’ve mastered psychedelic icing.

These are just as fun to look at as they are to eat, but why would you be staring at them when you could be eating them? Just remember to take that snap for Insta.