Thursday, March 31, 2011

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?

3 comments:

Kathy Cassel said...

Wow! You must have mega patience!!!! They came out really nice.

Lynette Eason said...

Angie, you are simply amazing.

Terri L. Gillespie said...

Are you kidding?! Angie, have you been possessed by Betty Crocker? Maybe you should offer cuppy-cakes by mail . . . I'd buy them.