Why should ice cream be the only dessert that gets a cherry on top? It’s so easy—and so cute—to make “cherry cupcakes” by pressing candy that resembles the fruit into the frosting. For the sweetest mini cupcakes for any birthday, shower, picnic, or party, all you need are some candies. There are so many possibilities, from candies that already look like cherries, like the gummy cherries and sour cherries scattered around the cupcakes in this picture, to actual glazed red cherries, to candies you can arrange to look like cherries. In the case of the cupcakes shown here, we used cherry sour balls and green apple sour belts.
Decide whether you want a single cherry on a pair as your cupcake topper, then press the round candy or candies into the frosting as the “cherry” and fold strips of sour belts to make the stem. The end result is bright, summery and so sweet!
You can bake your own cupcakes or buy white-frosted ones, but, either way, make them minis to match the size of the candy. If you’re serving a cake instead of cupcakes, make several cherries on top—an entire orchard full!
Not a fan of sour cherry balls? The same idea would work with any red ball candy from gumballs to red M&Ms. You can use green icing from a tube to pipe on the stems instead of sour ribbons. Or, use red icing for the cherries and green for the stems and pipe the entire cherry on top of the cupcake! Top the cupcakes within a few hours of serving so that the color of the candies doesn’t spread into the frosting. However you create your cherry cupcake toppers, these cupcakes will be everyone’s favorite “cherry” dessert since cherry pie!
For more fun cherry party ideas, click here.
What You’ll Need
- Cherry Sour Balls Candies
- Green Apple Sour Belts
- Scissors
- White frosted mini cupcakes
How-To
Step 1: Bake and frost cupcakes, or smooth out the icing of store-bought cupcakes to make a flat surface.
Step 2: Press cherry ball(s) into the icing to make either single or double cherries
Step 3: Cut sour belt in half lengthwise into two skinnier strips, and cut the longer strips into ¾ inch sections. Press the sections into the frosting to make a stem for each cherry.
Step 4: Take another 1 ¼ -inch section of sour belt and loop it into a leaf shape, pinch the cut ends together to form the leaf, then place at the top of the stems. Serve your cherry cupcakes!
