Hello!

~~I'm a scratch baker and a friend of mine just asked me to make cupcakes for a double birthday party for her kids in May. I want to make something special; something they are not used to, and I really don't want to mess up.  I just wonder if cupcakes are to be frosted and/or decorated only with buttercream, chocolate frosting and/or fondant, or if I can use other things like Italian meringue. The only reason I ask this is because I don't know if they will taste good with other frosting than the already mentioned. In all the tutorials about cupcakes I've seen cupcakes are  frosted with either of these.

You know, kids are  a little harder to please when it comes to things like flavors.

ANY SUGGESTIONS??? ADVICES??? COMMENTS???

Thank you all in advance :)

You don't say how old the kids are.  For some kids, different is not good - and we all know how that goes.  How bout a S'mores cupcake (there's one in my gallery) they you can do a marshmallow or meringue topping and toast it.  I made mine by making a graham cracker crust on the bottom of each cupcake then chocolate cake then the meringue.  It was a kids-of-all-ages pleaser!

Good luck

Theresa

If they are younger I would stick to what you know kids like.  Chocolate, vanilla, funfetti, something "non-offensive" haha. 

You can decorate cupcakes however you want.  You can use any buttercream...Italian meringue (with or without the butter-without will basically taste like a marshmallow), Swiss meringue (which is basically the same, just prepared differently), French buttercream, "American" style with butter and powdered sugar, etc.  You can even use poured fondant or rolled fondant, but in my experience, kids like cupcakes for the icing. 

You can always fill your cupcakes.  For either chocolate or vanilla, you could fill it with an Oreo filling.  That's always a popular one for me.  I just crush Oreos roughly and fold them into really whipped buttercream.  However, with a cupcake you're going to have to crush them so they make it through your star tip (I use like a 32 or something to fill).  For vanilla, if you wanted to you could fill it with a semisweet ganache.  Peanut butter also works for a chocolate filling, but of course you need to watch because now everyone has an allergy.

There are lots of ways to make "plain" cupcakes good!  They are kids, so you could put a blob of icing on a mud pie and they'd think it was great.

Thank You Both :)