Cupcake liners are the paper or foil casings in which you fill up your cupcake batter and bake your cupcakes in.  Cupcake liners are crucial in baking cupcakes and is almost a must-have when baking cupcakes. The only other options of baking cupcakes without any liners is if your pour your cupcake batter directly into greased muffin tins or muffin pan made of metal (or high grade silicone cupcake pans) and bake them without any paper or foil liners. Otherwise, cupcakes are almost always baked in liners. Liners come in many different shapes, colors, sizes and make. The most common or standard cupcake liners are made of white paper with ridged folds that run vertically around the sides of the liner. See my vanilla cupcakes that are baked in this type of cupcake liner. You can also find these type of paper liners in a whole lot of different colors, patterns, sizes and also shapes.  The other common type of cupcake liners include muffin cups ( see how I baked these mini funfetti cupcakes and triple chocolate cupcakes in white muffin cups). These are also made of paper, and are more sturdy than the ones with the ridged liners. Other types of cupcake liners include foil liners (made using aluminum foil) or tulip cupcake liners. These are basically parchment paper liners that are made or shaped with square pieces of parchment paper. To shape them, you place a small piece of parchment square (or wax paper) on a muffin tray cavity and press it down with your fingers to take the shape of the round cavity. In doing this, the corners of the parchment paper will form tulip-like petals around the cavity, hence the name tulip cupcake liners. You can see how I used this technique to make the DIY cupcake liners for my mini Basque cheesecake recipe, though in this recipe, I snipped the petals away. Cupcake wrappers, on the other hand, are pieces of decorative paper, foil or cardbaord that is wrapped around baked cupcakes, after all the baking is done (and sometimes after the decorating is done). They are not to be used for baking as they often do to have a base to hold the batter. The main purpose of a cupcake wrapper is for its decorative touch and to make your cupcakes look appealing and pretty, mostly for parties and celebrations. And similar to cupcake liners, there are many different types of cupcake wrappers.