Tips for Perfect Photo-ready Cupcakes!

As you may know being an Etsy seller isn’t that easy. Sure we have cute items for sale in our shops, but the only way we can show the world how cute our items really are is by creating a pretty mini-environment for those items.  What I mean by pretty mini-environment is: an eye catching picture with cute props, and great styling. Many books, forums, and blogs stress that great pictures are essential in order to gain sales—and they’re right. That’s why I create beautiful cupcakes and/or props to show off my cupcake toppers.

One thing I like to do when making my cupcakes is, make sure they are always the same height and are perfectly iced (but of course they don’t have to be). The tips I’m about to provide are basic, and I’m sure most people may already know them, but these are tips I never knew—these are tips I had to figure out on my own. So, maybe I can save you some time by showing you what I do! ;-D

First, I use boxed cake mix, and store bought icing. I feel it’s cheap and it doesn’t matter what they taste like really, because Etsians and potential buyers will only look at them and never eat them. But they do taste really good, LOL.

So go head and follow the instructions on the back of the cake mix box. Then once that and your oven are prepared go ahead and get your liners in your tray, and get ready to scoop!

Tip 1: I use this wonderful mini ice-cream scooper.

Tip 2: Only pour 1 ½ scoops of batter into each cup. Some advise filling the cups 3/4^th of the way up, but that leads to muffin-tops. By only using 1 ½ scoops of batter it will not only make a perfect cupcake; it will ensure you have enough for exactly 24 cupcakes.

Then once the baking is all done, your cupcakes should look like this:

Tip 3: I use jumbo size piping tools and a high quality piping bag.  In your local stores you’ll only find regular sized piping tools, but the jumbo sizes look much better and more professional.

Lastly, go ahead and add your signature pipe. Mine is just one circle with a dollop in the middle. But you can pipe the cupcakes whichever way you want. Make it your own so your buyers will always be able to identify your shop by your pictures.

Final result: