Instead of fussing with steamed milk and trying to perfect the very difficult skill of making good latte art, which is very tricky to practice unless you have access to a good espresso machine and work in a coffee shop or drink a lot of coffee, a good way to decorate your drinks is with a stencil. Aerolatte sells a Cappuccino Art Set. The art set comes with a collection of stencils that can be placed on top of your drink and dusted with cocoa powder or cinnamon using a fine duster, similar to the type used for sprinkling powdered sugar. The six stencils are made of sturdy plastic, are dishwasher safe and come with a small storage tin. There is only one downside and that is the fact that you are limited to the designs that are provided. As elegant as the premade stencils are, if you want to make your own, you can use the exact same technique (perhaps even the same stencils) that we used for making cupcake stencils a few weeks ago.

While I enjoy the flavor of a good frosting, I find that it can often overwhelm a cupcake, especially with cupcake bakeries pushing the trend towards really piling it on. Once there is more frosting than cake, it's time to cut back. As a result, I often opt for glazing cupcakes with chocolate or a powdered sugar glaze to make things simpler and maintain a good cake-to-frosting ratio. Another option is to just use a simple dusting of powdered sugar. Sprinkles don't really adhere to this type of cupcake topping, but by using a stencil, cut out of a stiff piece of cardstock or other thick paper, you can easily dress them up.

For this design, I used a simple line design and dusted the cupcakes with a mixture of cocoa powder and cinnamon, but anything that will create a color contrast will work well. If you are going to use a sticker buttercream-type frosting, you can use colored sugars with the stencil to make designs that way, but it's best to keep the frosting level and not pile it on to ensure a clear pattern.