Cupcakes! Bake & Decorate

Category

Description of App

The original cupcake app on the iPhone & iPod Touch- bake, decorate, and eat virtual cupcakes with all kinds of flavors & toppings, using real recipes!

  • Featured in "Our Favorite Things" - Disney FamilyFun magazine
  • "The cupcakes look so good I almost licked my phone." - Robin Rhys, AppAdvice.com
  • Over 6,000 five star ratings in the App Store.

Cupcakes! lets you bake, decorate, eat & share yummy cupcakes right from your iPod Touch or iPhone. Pick your cupcake liners, fill the pan with cake batter, pop it in the oven, and before you know it your cupcakes will come out piping hot. Shake your phone to get the cupcakes out of the pan and then choose from an amazing array of frostings and candy toppings, to build the perfect cupcake.

Once you've baked and decorated your masterpieces, you can share them with your friends via email, Facebook, or save them to your photo albums. And of course you can eat them! Choose the tablecloth and plate to serve them on and you are ready for dessert.

Features include:

  • 27 different cupcake batters (white, yellow, chocolate, strawberry, carrot cake, red velvet, lemon, confetti, marble, apple spice, blueberry muffin, pineapple, gingerbread and more!). Mix the cupcakes from scratch or use pre-made batter.
  • 32 different colors & patterns of cupcake liners, plus an option to create custom liners
  • 62 types of frosting, and a 'mix your own icing color' option
  • 80 candy toppings from gummy bears to sprinkles, fruit to nuts
  • 25 flavors of Jelly Belly gourmet jelly beans to add as toppings
  • 14 kinds of plates and 9 tablecloths, to give your cupcakes the perfect presentation
  • The ability to set your baking time, from lightly baked to crispy burnt cupcakes
  • Candles you can blow out by blowing on your phone! (shake for older iPods)
  • A "Cupcake of the Week" contest and a Hall of Fame for the best user submitted cupcakes

Version

2.9

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

Not Known

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

Accessibility Comments

I have kept the original information at the end of the post but as of 10/17/2012 update, everything seems to be working great. You no longer need to switch on and off VO to use the app. All tags are clearly labeled. The pan for baking has been modified so now you know where to put your batters and liners. The swipe gesture for taking off the wrapper seems to have disappeared but you can still tap around to eat the cupcake. I am also not totally sure why each time you take a bite of the cupcake it still says "Cupcake" but hey, it's a drastic improvement! You can also very easily use the timer. I haven't tried blowing out the candles yet so if someone has please let me know if this is accessible. What a great response from the Maverick software company to our requests! Original posting: I was not expecting much for this to be accessible from the beginning as it is mainly a graphics-based app. Upon launch, you can log in with your GamesCenter ID if you wish. Also make sure in your settings within the app that your sounds are turned on, otherwise as a VO user you may not get as much entertainment out of the app as I have. You may also want to disable the "Remove From Pan" step as it didn't work routinely enough for me with the hand gestures recommended. From here, you will need to toggle voiceover on and off to use the app but it is surprisingly addictive if you are a cupcake foodie. I will walk you through what I mean. All the headlines of each page are read and then across the top you will begin to see your choices. First, you pick the type of liner you want, such as red stripes, pink, blue, etc. Swipe left across the top to see all your choices. Each pattern is actually well-labeled for a graphics app. Double-tap what you want, then turn voiceover off. On the screen there is a pan with four places to put your liner in the middle of the screen. Without voiceover running, tap the middle of the screen as if you were making a Braille "G," (dots 1, 2, 4, 5), then turn VO back on. If you have gotten any of the wrappers in the pan correctly, VO automatically reads "Choose Your Batter." Repeat the process of swiping left and right across the screen for your batter. For this, we will pick "Red Velvet." Turn VO back off and double-tap the same four dot pattern to fill your cupcake tin. Again, if you have made it into any of the liners, you will now be able to "Bake" your cupcakes. Turn VO back on to see if the "Set Timer" screen as appeared. Assuming it has, you can now run your finger in a clockwise position at the middle bottom of the screen to set your timer. If you have added time to the clock, you will then hear "Bake" button at the bottom middle of the screen once voiceover is turned back on. Double-tap and hear your timer begin to tick down. When they are finished baking, your timer will ring and you will then need to take the cupcakes out of the pan if you left that on in your settings. I disabled it as the shake gesture didn't seem to always work when I tried to take the cupcakes out of the pan, so when the timer rings now there's a dialogue box which tells me the baking time is over upon the ringing. Double-tap the "Sweet" button to continue. Now it's time to decorate. Choose from many toppings, such as frosting, candies, letters, etc. One cupcake at a timewill be displayed so I recommend adding each topping to all the cupcakes at once. For example, if you want to frost your cupcakes, choose your frosting, turn VO off, then using a swiping/spreading motion, attempt to frost your cupcake When you're satisfied, turn VO back on and then look for a "right arrow" button to advance to the next cupcake. From there, turn VO off, frost cupcake #2, and repeat. This is how I figured out how accurate I was at getting cupcake liners and cupcake batter into the pan, as you cannot put batter into the pan without a liner. So if you only hit one area with your taps correctly, only one baked cupcake will appear. The first couple of times I did it I only got two cupcakes baked but now I can get all four filled without a problem. Using a spreading or swiping motion when you have the frosting highlighted will show up on the screen as you swipe. For candy, double-tap the middle of the screen and it will appear and be added with that motion when it is selected in your topping menu. Now for the best part. Time to eat! At the bottom of the decorating screen, there are several options, including ways to upload your creations onto Facebook and the app's Hall of Fame. The last button is the "Eat button." Double-tap and the frirst instruction says to swipe to remove wrapper. Turn VO off, swipe, and you will hear the wrapper come off. To eat, double-tap around the screen and you will hear eating sounds. You can tell where there's no more cupcake to eat as no more eating sounds are heard there. When you feel you've had enough and are ready for the next one, turn VO back on and continue to eat by selecting the "Eat Another" from the bottom of the screen. Repeat the process until you feel full.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

It took the Maverick Software company less than six weeks to address the original accessibility issues. I am so pleased with what they have done and highly recommend this app. It is totally worth the $0.99 to support such great work. Let's hope we can get some more of them accessible!

Recommendations

5 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by treky fan 1 year 11 months ago

Options

Comments

By Chelsea on Saturday, September 22, 2012 - 22:41

Direct touch? I have not bought this app yet, but it seems slightly entertaining, especially considering all the choices and neat gestures one must implement. Would direct touch work, something akin to how Fleksy operates now? So you can still have VoiceOver on and just touch the screen when it becomes cupcake time? I don't know any technical challenges or limitations this approach would entail.

By Jennifer on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 22:41

Sent off a long email today to the developer so I shall keep you posted!

By Jennifer on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 22:41

I received the following email from the developer when I reported problems: From: Maverick Support [mailto:support@mavericksw.com] Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2012 1:52 PM To: Jennifer Subject: Re: Cupcakes! App Question Thanks for the great feedback and review. We hadn't ever considered how our apps work with VO, but this is really neat. I'll definitely look into the VO developers guide and see what we could do to smooth out some of the rough edges (and possibly update some of our other apps to work better as well). Glenda

The use of Direct Touch would be a very cool idea, but I think it would require a lot of work for the developer to implement that.  I have already contacted Maverick Software and found them very responsive and keen to make their excellent and fun aps as readily available to as many people as possible, so you never know, they might want to try it.  personally I think what would make Cupcakes! easier would be more sound effects, so that we could hear if we have managed to put liners in cake pans, batter in liners etc, that would make the game much more playable and more fun.  I have this ap, as well as More Sundaes and  More Salad! The latter two are easier because there is no cooking involved.  However I intend to persiveer with Cupcakes, I still can't manage to get four cakes into the pan, but I keep trying.  If you would like to hear an audio walk through of how to play, I have made one and you can get it here: http://t.co/vIyR8Jw I hope it will be useful to someone.

By Jen on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 22:41

I don't have this app yet, but I tried "Cupcakeroo" last night without much success. I think I'll go back and get this one, and I'll definitely contact the developer to suggest more sound effects. On a side note, the "more Grilling" app seems to work pretty well. That one works much the same as others, and when you have to "flip" the food on the grill, just one-finger swipe down or up with VO turned off.

By Jennifer on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 22:41

In reply to by Lulu Hartgen

Just got the following note this week from Glenda at Maverick software: Good news, we did a bunch of work the last couple days and expanded & tweaked the Voice Over functions of Cupcakes!. We went through every screen, made sure anything you interacted with is tagged with the proper label. This new version is going off to Apple for approval, and hopefully in a week or two will be out as a free update. Many of the hard things like picking a spot in the pan to add a liner or batter are very easy now (the pan cups will read off as "pan cup 1" or "pan cup 2". The names for the various liners, frostings, toppings & other buttons are all the exact names from labels, not just filenames, so it's much clearer what you are picking. We'll be interested to hear how you & your readers like the new update, and welcome any feedback if there are other tweaks we can make.

Isn't it great news about Cupcakes!  Glenda at Maverick is so good, I can't wait to try the new update.

 

And now to More Grillin'!  Thanks for trying that one out, Jennifer!  As you saw, I tried More Popcorn, and it was broken, so I didn't fancy buying more of them in case they were broken too.  I loved the sound of "More Grillin'" so I might treat myself.  No, make that will treat myself.  If I don't see you post it up I'll do it myself when I've played about with it.

By Lulu Hartgen on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 22:41

In reply to by Lulu Hartgen

I got the update this morning and I am very pleased with it! Putting the liners and the batter into the cake pans is now a breeze.  Also everything is labelled much clearer so that choosing is much better.  The one thing I am not clear about is whether you need to still turn VO off when you frost and top.  Once you have chosen what you want there is something which says "Cupcake". I am not sure if double tapping this will frost your cake. I will get some eyes working on this and find out as soon as I can.  On the whole though this is a great update and I would like to congratulate Maverick and thank them for being so responsive and helpful.

By Melissa Roe on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 22:41

In reply to by Lulu Hartgen

Hello, I downloaded this app to try out this evening. It seems pretty accessible. I had no trouble selecting the pan liners, lining the pan cups and picking the batter. I do run into problems with the following situations. If I want to make cupcakes from scratch, it says to drag ingredients into the mixing bowl. I see all the ingredients, but exactly how do you get them into the mixing bowl if you're using voiceover? Another situation is the oven dial. It says to set the baking time, but when I tap the oven dial, nothing happens. I then type bake, and the cupcakes bake. I'm able to select my frosting, candy, and toppings, but I'm not seeing all the toppings like sprinkles and nuts that was mentioned in the description of the app. Do you need to purchase those toppings? Finally, when it comes to eating the cupcake, you can type cupcake until you're blue in the face, but how do you know when you've actually finished the cupcake? I just keep taking bites, and it doesn't disappear, even after 20 or so double taps. Also, let's say I want to send a cupcake to a friend on facebook. I tried doing that, and it just said it was uploaded to my facebook account. Is there a way to send to a spacific friend, like for some one's birthday for example? Anyway, I hope I can get a reply soon. This app is actually kind of fun. I'd like to be able to create neat little deserts and send them to people. Anyway, take care, and god bless.

Hi, Melissa.  I don't have as many answers as you would like, but I do have suggestions.  Dragging ingredients is a problem, but here is a suggestion: how about trying double tap and hold like you would if you're moving an icon on your home screen? The problem of you not seeing all your batters or toppings etc is easy.  All the batters, toppings etc are on a number of pages so you need to do a three-fingered swipe to change pages.  You swipe left to go up a page, swipe right to come down a page. I have tried eating a cupcake with someone sighted, and even when the picture had disappeared you still hear the munch sound, so just eat it until you've had enough is my advice.  I'm afraid I can't help with your Facebook problem because up until now I've been afraid of my creations being too much of a mess for me to send them anywhere, but I hope my other answers helped you some.  I hope you keep enjoying Cupcakes! Happy baking.

To set your timer, drag your finger in a clockwise motion towards the middle to bottom of the screen. This moves the hand on the timer is my understanding. I have tried it and then hit "Bake" and it does make the time longer or shorter. I have not tried to bake my own from scratch nor send them via Facebook. I'll see if I can figure that out over the next week as I too, wasn't sure how messy my creations were coming out *grin.*

By Chelsea on Monday, October 22, 2012 - 22:41

In reply to by Jennifer

I too bought the app when the update came out. I've had a little bit of trouble putting Maliners in, because I don't know when they're in. And I tried to double tap and hold method for dragging and dropping the ingredients in the bowl; it didn't work I might suggest is to the developer, as you can easily reorder other things in iOS.

By Nanda on Friday, February 22, 2013 - 22:41

How do I put frosting on my cupcake? And how do I know it's on the whole cupcake? I try just clicking on the frosting and try clicking on top of the cupcake, with voiceover on but my husband told me that it's only did a little spot in the middle of the cupcake. And after I put the frosting, how do I add all the other decorations thank you

By SilverMoon on Saturday, November 22, 2014 - 22:41

Okay so I don't know if anyone looks at this, but I'm having issues putting the cupcake ingredients in the mixing bowl. Oddly enough, I at least got one liner in the pan, because it asked me to choose the batter. Then I went to the cook book and I'm making some sort of cake, but now I'm royally stuck. It says drag the ingredients in to the bowl, but I don't know what the gesture is for that. Does anyone know? Help? I emailed Jennifer, the original poster of this app about this issue, but I haven't heard back from her. So, this is me posting on here, in hopes someone looks at it, even though it's like on the fourth page of the apps/games section and answers back to me. Thanks.