Flowerpot Cupcakes

Click on any photo to enlarge.



My friend Becky has a birthday today (Happy Birthday, Becky!), so I wanted to make her something special . . . and I'm on a baking kick. I had seen pictures of flower cupcakes before (several varieties), so I wasn't sure what would work best, but I wanted to fill a flowerpot with cupcakes.

So I went to Michaels, found a flower pot, and found a piece of foam to fit inside (though I had to trim it a bit to make it fit). Because I wanted the surface to curve like real flowers would, I placed a second circle of foam atop the first. I wrapped the foam in green tissue paper and left some around the edges of the pot so at the end I could pull the papers upward and surround the cupcakes just as if they were real flowers.

Note: the craft store had zillions of Easter baskets which would have been cute with cupcakes, too!

I knew I had far too many cupcakes to fit in a flower pot, so I iced some of them in a rose pattern with some light blue buttercream icing. Becky's husband requested cream cheese frosting when I called to talk to him, and I discovered that cream cheese icing doesn't "pipe." LOL! It's good, but it's not stiff enough to stay in a piping design.

So I did make some cupcakes with cream cheese icing, and instead of forming the flowers with icing, I formed them with marshmallows. (The idea came from a great book called HELLO, CUPCAKE.) You take a mini-marshmallow, slice it in half diagonally, and drag the cut edge (it will be sticky) through colored sugar. I propped the sugared marshmallows in the icing and made rows around the cupcake. The "stamens" in the center are candy-covered sunflower seeds. The few green leaves you see in the final photo are cut out of fruit roll-ups (I had to eat through an entire box to find the green ones!) LOL!

I had seen another adorable flower made out of Oreos and made to look like sunflowers, but I'll have to wait for a buttercream icing project to attempt that version.

After letting the flowers chill in the fridge for about an hour (to set the icing), I put toothpicks in the styrofoam, and then placed my cupcakes on the toothpicks. I delivered the buttercream cupcakes in a basket and just managed to deliver them before a rainstorm broke over my head. :-)

What fun! I only hope Becky has as much fun eating them as I did making them!

~~Angie

OOOOH---just had another brainstorm. Do white cupcakes on a foam circle covered with paper doilies--insert a handle--and you could have bridal bouquet cupcakes! Who's having a bridal shower?