I can modestly say my cupcakes flower bouquet have always elicited praise for their charming appearance and lip-licking edibility. When in dessert doubt, make cupcakes. You can do as little or as much to the decor as you have time for, but pipe an intricate rosette or smear on some frosting and sprinkles and you’ve got winning cupcakes every time – you really don’t need much to get people to love them.
Cupcake Flower Bouquet
For mother’s day I decided to take the Cupcake Flower Bouquet approach, albeit elevated for the special occasion. What better way to celebrate mother’s day than with a bouquet of flowers? And if those flowers are cupcakes? Mom will love you the more for it!
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I used three cupcake (and four flower) varieties for my bouquets. All recipes are adapted from the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book. There is the Two-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes, which are easy to make and easily devoured. There are Honey Cupcakes, which were delicious and delicately sweet. And finally, the strawberry buttermilk cupcakes, the light white cake concealing chunks of succulent strawberries. Recipes will be up shortly!
I opted for Martha’s swiss meringue buttercream recipe for the whole batch of cupcakes, and tinted portions of the batch to suit my floral inspirations. Just make sure your kitchen is cool when you make it and pipe the cream with a loose hand, because it does tend to run.
Here are the recipes for my cupcake bouquets! Remember, planning ahead and pacing your steps will make everything smoother.
- Two Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes – originally
- To decorate your flowers
- In my bouquets, I made 2 large cupcake batches and 1 mini-cupcake batch.
The two large batches I used to make piped peonies and dahlias, and the mini-cupcakes were tiny rosebuds. You can find many different variations on youtube or google, or in any cake decorating book. Use your cupcake top as you would a rose nail, and pipe according to size and scale. You can use any colour you like for your flowers. I chose orange, purple and pink.
Tip: for multi-dimentional flowers, fill a ¼ of the piping bag with coloured icing and another ¼ with white icing and squeeze into a bowl until the colours come out together, creating a faded colour on each flower petal.
For the peonies, using tip #104 (leaf tip), narrow side down at a 45 degree angle facing out from the cupcake, pipe small half circles, each on over lapping the last, along the outer edge of the cupcake. The second layer of piped petals starts just overtop the last, slightly closer to the centre at a 90 degree angle so that the petals open up as you pipe. Finish by piping short petal loops in the centre of the cupcake.
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For Dahlias, using tip #103 (smaller leaf tip), narrow side down at a 45 degree angle facing out, pipe each petal (aprox 5 on the outer edge of the cupcake) by quicky waving your piping bag as you gently squeeze out the buttercream, creating a ruffle-textured petal. Over lap the next row of petals the same as with the peonies, and finish with some ruffles in the centre.
For the roses, I used tip #103 again, and starting in the centre of the cupcake, created a accord shaped mound by gently wrapping the icing to create a dome. Beginning at any side of the dome, use short, quick strokes of icing to over lap and create the rose bud. As your rose grows, make your petals longer and add texture by ruffling the petal edges.
Cupcake Flower Bouquet Arrangement
To assemble a Cupcake Flower Bouquet
You’ll need:
- A short vase, clay potting plant, basket or container of your choice*
- Styrofoam balls or sheets to fill container to the rim
- Toothpicks
- Ribbon (if desired)
- Filler of choice (flowers, paper “grass”, leaves, be creative!)
- Your decorated flower cupcakes
*if you’re making a big batch, a balcony planter would be a really cute option for a cupcake garden
My inner craft geek lives for decorating, and I wish I had more time to play around with my decorations a bit. I love personalized details; whimsical touches and creative expression. Sometimes I think that (if it didn’t entail cleaning) I would love to just be a domestic goddess.
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Take your container of choice and fill it with your Styrofoam, securing with toothpicks and making sure it does not move around too much. If your container is glass, as mine was, decoratively wrap it in ribbon to conceal the Styrofoam, otherwise, you can wrap a bow, or leave it as is.
Once your container has been decorated to suit your taste, take your toothpicks and poke holes into the Styrofoam, 2 for each cupcake, in a circular pattern, careful to leave enough space to not smush them together. Remove those toothpicks and gently insert them, with similar spacing, into the bottom of your cupcakes and one by one, slide your cupcakes-toothpicks into the pre-poked holes.
Play around to arrange your composition of choice, and very gently fill any empty spaces with your filler of choice. Wish your mother a Happy Mother’s Day – or Birthday – and offer to help her eat them!
Snap some photos, upload them online and post the links in the comments section!
Note: cupcakes perched on toothpicks do follow rules of gravity. Be very careful when carrying or transporting your bouquet, it will wobble if not secured!
