New York Times Bestseller: Sweeten special occasions with these easy recipes for creative cupcakes using common candies. With hundreds of brilliant photos, this cookbook features witty, one-of-a-kind, imaginative cupcake designs using candies from the local convenience store, no baking skills or fancy pastry equipment required. Create funny, scary, and sophisticated masterpieces using a ziplock bag and common candies and snack items. With these easy-to-follow techniques, even the most kitchen-challenged cooks can: • raise a big-top circus cupcake tier for a kid's birthday • plant candy vegetables on Oreo earth cupcakes for a garden party • trot out a line of confectionery “pup cakes” for a dog fancier • serve spaghetti and meatball cupcakes for April Fool's Day • bewitch trick-or-treaters with eerie alien cupcakes • create holidays on icing with a white Christmas cupcake wreath, turkey cupcake place cards, and Easter egg cupcakes

Provides a collection of creative cupcake projects for a variety of special occasions and holidays while featuring comical animal and accessory decorations crafted from edible ingredients.

Kylie Jean has a new get-rich-quick scheme: selling cupcakes at garage sales!

Dani Shapiro, a young woman from a deeply religious home, became the girlfriend of a famous and flamboyant married attorney-her best friend's stepfather. The moment Lenny Klein entered her life, everything changed: she dropped out of college, began drinking, and neglected her friends and family. But then came a phone call-an accident on a snowy road had left her parents critically injured. Forced to reconsider her life, Shapiro learned to re-enter the world she had left. Telling of a life nearly ruined by the gift of beauty, and then saved through tragedy, Shapiro's memoir is a beautiful account of how a life gone terribly wrong can be rescued through tragedy.

A dad’s “charming, funny” memoir of trying to pass along his refined culinary tastes, with some kid-friendly recipes included (Neal Pollack). Armed with the belief that kids don’t need puree in a jar or special menus when eating out, restaurant critic and food writer Matthew Amster-Burton was determined to share his love of all things culinary with his daughter, Iris. From the high of rediscovering tastes through a child’s unedited reaction to the low of realizing his precocious vegetable fiend was just going through a phase, Matthew discovered that raising an adventurous eater is about exposure, invention, and patience. Sharing in Matthew’s culinary capers is little Iris, a budding gourmand and a zippy critic herself—who makes huge sandwiches, gobbles up hot chilies, and even helps around the kitchen. This account, with dozens of delicious recipes and notes on which dishes can be prepared by “little fingers,” reminds us: “Food is fun, and you get to enjoy it three times a day, plus snacks.” “A very timely and excellent book.” —Anthony Bourdain “A fast, funny memoir punctuated with sensible advice and recipes . . . Encourages adults to chill the heck out and have fun cooking with their kids.” —Seattle Weekly “An antidote to the ubiquitous advice that bland food is best for little ones.” —Associated Press “Full of great ideas for family meals. In a world of culinary pandering to kids . . . Amster-Burton gets the recipe right.” —Neal Pollack, author of Alternadad “Amster-Burton is equal parts Mario Batali, Ray Romano, Dr. Spock of toddler cuisine, and Mr. Spock of child logic.” —Steven Shaw, author of Turning the Tables

Spelling queen: Kylie Jean is studying hard for the spelling bee at school, but she keeps getting distracted by the kitten that she and her cousin Lucy found.

A Gourmet-declared "cake whisperer" and her creative partner present an array of striking baked confections for every occasion, providing simple, step-by-step instructions for fun and unusual themed cakes.