Individual Cupcakes

• Cupcakes are easy to fill with jams, jellies or other ingredients. Insert a small tip of a pastry bag into the top of a baked, cooled cupcake and gently squeeze the filling into the cake, taking care not to overfill it. Frosting the cupcake top conceals the hole. Instead of conventional frosting, lightly coat the cupcake tops with icing and imbed with coated, candy pieces or chopped nuts. Create artistic cupcakes with shapes cut from fondant, spun sugar flowers or butterflies, themed marzipan or molded candy adornments, such as graduation caps, Christmas trees, gift boxes, baby rattles or wedding rings available at bakeries, food specialty shops and craft stores.
  
  

Cupcake Tiers

• Stands specially made to display cupcakes are available at cookware and baking supply stores. They typically have three to eight tiers that become progressively smaller from bottom to top to create innovative mixtures of cupcakes on each layer or use the top layer for an oversize cupcake with miniature cupcakes decorated the same on the lower tiers. Some tiers have prongs on them to display cupcakes at various angles for a three-dimensional effect.
  
  

Freeform Towers

• Use cupcakes attached together with baking dowels or bamboo skewers to build towers. Create cartoon characters, wild animals, houses, vehicles, musical instruments or any shape that reflects the guest of honor's interests or theme of the party by using the cupcakes as building blocks. Frost and decorate the tower after construction. For a bridal shower or engagement party, build a cascading bouquet of cupcakes decorated like wild flowers or roses, using green tinted pastry straws for the stems and leaves cut from thin green fondant.
  
  

Custom Designs

• Create your own personalized designs by decorating cupcakes to resemble objects. For instance, construct a triangular billiard table rack from cookies, frost cupcakes to represent each of the billiard balls and display them inside the rack. Ice domed cupcakes with white icing, make little dimples in the tops and display them on a sheet cake frosted with bright green icing for a golfer's party. Use the same approach to transform cupcakes into tennis balls, basketballs, baseballs or soccer balls.