Easy School Spirit Cupcakes

With our oldest now in school it’s hard not to start thinking about all the treats I’ll be baking for her. Bake sales, PTO meetings, class room parties…the list goes on. A few weeks ago this all came to a reality as she brought home a PTO meeting invitation and her very first fundraiser. Luckily our move date was prior to the fundraiser so she couldn’t participate, she was devastated- I was completely relived! But I know…I can’t get away with it too long. Soon I’ll be helping alongside her as she raises funds for her school…but honestly…I’d rather just bake them cupcakes!

Turns out that very same week, I had the chance. I was asked to make some cupcakes for a school bake sale. It was totally last minute but I was up for the challenge. Since it was so last minute like ring, hello, click, bake, tada…I decided to focus on presenting some pretty little cupcakes instead of special flavors.

I even took a little poll (via social media) to see just what people are looking for at a bake sale. It was a pretty unanimous vote – looks over flavor any day. Those who chimed in helped confirm my suspicion that most people will pick the prettiest cupcake on the table over even their favorite flavor if it looks subpar. The idea here is that if they took time making the cupcake look pretty, they most likely also took time carefully baking and preparing the cupcake in a clean environment. Messy cupcakes might taste yummy, but when they are coming from a stranger it can make you think twice about how they were prepared.

So I thought I would share with you guys my easy school spirit cupcakes and just how easy you can throw together some pretty cupcakes of your own.

Her school colors happened to be purple and white, so I started out by digging through my stash to see just what purple and white I had. Thankfully I had plenty! My fav baking shop Sweets and Treats Boutique has just about every school color you can dream of – in all different products! Having a few different products in your school’s color handy makes it really easy to pull together a treat in a flash.

I ended up using a combo of different purple items solid purple liners, striped purple liners, chevron purple liners, light purple straws, dark purple straws, and purple treat bags for display. The treat bags make are absolutely perfect to wrap up cookies for a bake sale, in your team’s colors!

First I used some purple washi tape and the paper straws to make little cupcake pennants, a quick and easy way to dress a cupcake. The straws were cut in half then washi tape wrapped around one end and cut just like I did for these 4th of July cupcakes. Then I made some simple fondant W’s as toppers. You could get pretty fancy with these if you’d like. Add a little border, make baseballs, footballs, the mascot – the possibilites are endless. Keeping it simple here – I stuck with the school’s initial.

To make some fondant toppers just dye your fondant, roll out on wax paper, and cut out your letter with your cutter. I used my “W” from this set.

Let the letters harder for a little bit, over night if you can. Place on the cupcakes before delivering…if they are on their for too long in advance they might get soggy from the moisture in the buttercream, especially in the fridge!

As for the cupcakes, here’s a cool way to add sprinkles just the the bottom layer! I love doing this – such a cool look. Pipe a little blob of icing in the center and then one ring around the cupcake.

Then dip or roll in sprinkles and then finish by piping the rest of the swirl on top! If you’d like more info on how I pipe my cupcakes check out Frosting Cupcakes 101.

This time I didn’t get a chance to snap pics of some of the ways I package up cupcakes individually – that may be a future post all on it’s own. But I highly reccomend Wilton’s disposable cupcake carrier for events like this. I did a little happy dance when they came out with these! They work wonderfully and there’s no worrying about getting your expensive cupcake carrier back!

It’s that easy – there are tons of ways to bring a little school sprit to your bake sale! I was told the coach liked these so much, they raffled them off! Much more fun then going door to door selling junk, don’t you think?