How to Make Cinco de Mayo Cupcakes

Would you like to learn how to make Cinco de Mayo cupcakes? Decorating cupcakes is a holiday tradition. Cupcakes are very quick and easy treats that are part of an increasingly hot trend.http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/wayoflife/03/23/cupcake.craze/index.htmlPart of the reason for the trend is that cupcakes are versitile. These How to Make Cinco de Mayo Cupcakes work well to bring into school for a Cinco de Mayo classroom celebration, or feature on a buffet table at a Cinco de Mayo Party.

Cinco de Mayo celebrates a victory of the Mexican army over the French in 1862. It's a patriotic occasion, so it's appropriate to frost cupcakes in green, white, and red, the colors of the Mexican flag. In modern-day American culture, celebrating Cinco de Mayo is like celebrating Irish culture by celebrating St. Patrick's Day, or celebrating Oktoberfest.http://www.buzzle.com/articles/cinco-de-mayo-traditions-and-activities.html

With just white frosting and food coloring, you can be ready to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, cupcake style! Read on to learn how to make Cinco de Mayo cupcakes.

Cinco de Mayo Cupcakes are not hard to make. For simple, easy cupcakes, start with unfrosted white cupcakes and decorate them with the colors of Mexico. If you're making the cupcakes yourself, make sure they are cooled to room temperature before icing them to make sure the icing doesn't run.

1. Unfrosted cupcakes: make ahead, freeze and thaw; from a mix; or purchased
2. White frosting
3. Red and green food coloring: gel, paste, or powder for intense colors
4. 3 bowls for frosting
5. 2 mixing spoons
6. 3 knives or spatulas to spread the frosting
7. A way to display and/or transport the cupcakes

1. Start by dividing the frosting into three bowls.
2. Add a few drops of red food coloring to one bowl, green to another, and leave one bowl white. If you're using gel, paste or powder, follow the directions on the package.
3. Blend the food coloring thoroughly, using a clean spoon for each color. You could also use an immersion blender, cleaning and drying it thoroughly in between mixing each color.
4. Frost the middle third of each cupcake white, one outer side green, and the other red.

If you are simply making stripes, then divide the frosting into three equal parts. However, if you're going to have a base color, for example red or white, and then use the other two colors as accents, then make sure you make about 3/5 of the icing your base color, and 1/5 of each other color.

Work quickly, so the icing doesn't start to develop hard edges that can rip the cupcake beneath and make it crumble.

1. Cupcakes can be baked ahead and frozen. Thaw completely before frosting.
2. Use stripes of red and green colored sugar to make quick and easy Cinco de Mayo cupcakes
3. Arrange slices of kiwi and strawberry on white frosting for a fruity Cinco de Mayo cupcake
4. Top the cupcakes with a Mexican flag.
5. Consider topping red velvet cupcakes with white frosting and green sprinkles.
6. You can draw a Mexican flag on the cupcake with red and green decorating gel.
7. Top cupcakes with a sombrero or cactus figurine.
8. You can also use the recipe in the video above to add some classic flavor to your cupcakes. However, children may not appreciate Margarita flavor.

You can also do all of these things with the Margarita Cupcakes in the above recipe.

You can also top your cupcakes with homemade Mexican Sombrero edible toppers. Here's how:

It's simple to make a cookie sombrero to place on top of your Cinco de Mayo cupcake. You'll need vanilla wafers, white frosting, white gumdrops, and green and red sprinkles.

1. Take a vanilla wafer cookie, and dab frosting in the center
2. Place a white gumdrop on the frosting dab
3. Roll the edges of the "sombrero" in frosting, and then in green and red sprinkles to create a decorative trim for your sombrero.