pink and white flower bouquet cupcakes

Last year for Teacher Appreciation Day, I signed up to make dessert for the teacher luncheon, and ended up making these flower bouquet cupcakes for the elementary school! I've made floral themed cupcakes for Teacher Appreciation Day before (see here and here), but this time I decided to test out my new set of Russian piping tips. 

Let me just say that the tutorials I saw on these tips made them look so easy, but I actually had a hard time with them! For my first attempt, I popped the piping tip into my pastry bag, filled it with frosting (I used an offset spatula to place white frosting on the sides of the bag and pink frosting in the middle), and excitedly piped my first flower ... but the frosting must have been to soft, because the "flower" came out as a big blob, with no flower definition at all. So I placed my pastry bag (still full of frosting) into the fridge to let it firm up a bit. But I must have left it in the fridge too long because when I attempted to pipe my next flower, the frosting was too hard and wouldn't squeeze through the holes in the tip! *Sigh*

Anyhow, once you get your frosting to the right temperature and piping consistency, the tips do end up piping cute and easy flowers. Once my chocolate cupcakes were baked and cooled (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), I started on the decorating. For the "flower bouquet", I piped once flower in the middle ...

... and then piped flowers around the center flower, until the top of the cupcake was full of flowers.

Then I filled in the gaps in between the flowers with green frosting and a leaf tip.

I thought they turned out pretty cute!

The other thing to point out is that every time you refill your piping bag, the placement of the center color may come out differently. In the ones above, the pink isn't really in the middle of the flower, and kind of seeps to one side. Below are the flowers that came out after I refilled my piping bag.

The pink came out more centered and even.

So I suppose if you want flowers that are all consistent, then use a large piping bag (mine are 12-inch) so you can fit more frosting without having to refill.

I've also seen people do only one color, which came out nice as well, and in that case you won't have to worry about the inconsistency in color placement.

Enjoy!

banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and fruit leather flower pom poms

By the time I got to the sign-up sheet for the Teacher Appreciation Week luncheon at my son's preschool, there was nothing left to sign up for.  Literally nothing - all the slots were full.  But I wanted to make something to bring anyway, and since we had an abundance of overripe bananas at home, I decided to make banana cupcakes.

At first I was just going to top the cupcakes with a simple cream cheese frosting, but then a few days before the luncheon I saw this post at Best Friends for Frosting, which linked to this tutorial at Wedding Chicks - edible DIY flower pom poms made out of fruit leather!  Genius!

Making the pom poms was fairly simple.  The hardest part was getting the petals to stay put.  But the tutorial said to use toothpicks to help hold the petals in place while they dried, and that seemed to help.  But even though I let them dry overnight, they were still a bit soft and floppy the next morning.

The night before the luncheon, I made my banana cupcakes using my mom's banana bread recipe (stay tuned for a post on her banana bread later).  One batch of batter that would normally fill one 9-inch loaf pan ended up making 16 cupcakes.

I thought perhaps the cupcakes might come out more like muffins, since the recipe was meant for banana bread, but I sampled one after they were baked, and it was actually the perfect texture!

Next I whipped up a batch of cream cheese frosting and used a 1M tip to pipe large roses on top of the cupcakes.  And then I topped them with my pom poms.

I had only made 6 of the fruit leather pom poms (they were more time-consuming to make than I had anticipated!), so I topped the remaining cupcakes with sugar pearls and non-pareils.

I hope all the teachers enjoyed the cupcakes!  Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

hydrangea cupcakes - lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting

When I saw this post on I Am Baker's hydrangea cake, I immediately wanted to make it, except in cupcake form!  With Mother's Day coming up, as well as Teacher Appreciation Week at Matthew's preschool (I had signed up to make a dessert for the luncheon), it was the perfect opportunity to make them.

I went to my Martha Stewart "Cupcakes" book for a lemon cupcake recipe.  The recipe calls for lemon zest as well as lemon juice, for lots of lemony flavor.  The cupcakes turned out super fragrant, moist, and soft.

For the frosting, I made a basic cream cheese frosting and also added some lemon zest and a tiny bit of lemon juice.  Once the cupcakes were cool, I piped the lemon cream cheese frosting on the cupcakes in my signature basketweave design.

Then made a batch of buttercream frosting (which I divided in thirds and then colored  pink, lavendar, and purple) to pipe on as flowers.  I thought they turned out pretty cute, but not as impressive as a cake.  So maybe one of these days I'll try making the cake too!

Hope everyone had a great Mother's Day!