Cupcake Bouquet

I've never really liked flowers. They're pretty, colourful and smell great but I don't love them and I've never particularly felt sad that I've never received a bunch wrapped in pink and white paper and tied with a delicate ribbon. Nice to look at, yes. Nice to receive, yes, but not something I crave having. There isn't a single flower or plant in my house and none in the garden either. I think it mostly comes down to being too lazy and/or busy to look after them properly.

When it comes to giving flowers, though, it's a whole other story. I love to see people giving flowers. I've helped my Mum countless times choose an arrangement for a friend or place some in a vase that my Dad has brought for her. A persons face lights up when they get flowers, it's a universal thing. They can say "Thank you," "Get well soon" or "Good luck." They're versatile.

But still not really for me. Flowers are a tad cliché, an easy choice. And I'm a baker, so what better way to recreate the gift of giving flowers in cake form. Cake bouquets are gorgeous things and the effort put into them, in my opinion, makes them a far better gift than a classic flower bouquet.

The person receiving this bouquet I made deserved a lot of effort going into it. A friend and work colleague of mine, Ellesha, has been stressing for a good few months now over University interviews and scholarship applications for her MA and over the past couple of weeks not only did she get a place, she got two places and a full scholarship. She's worked so, so hard to get the offers and deserves all the good things coming to her, so I just had to make her something special as a congratulations gift.

Her face when I gave it to her was amazing. She looked so happy to have been recognised for her hard work and she even started to cry! One of my favourite things about baking is seeing the joy on people's faces when something has been made specifically for them, and something like a cake bouquet shows real care for showing someone how special they are.

Make one, and I guarantee the receiving person will never forget it!

INGREDIENTS

For the cakes:

6oz butter, softened
6oz caster sugar
3 eggs
5.5oz self raising flour
1tsp vanilla extract
1oz cocoa powder

For the buttercream:

250g butter, softened
300g icing sugar*
1 tsp vanilla extract
Zest of 1 orange
Orange food colouring gel
Pink food colouring gel
Purple food colouring gel

* those of you who've read my posts before know I don't actually measure icing sugar, just add until it's the right consistency, so this is a complete guess-timate

EXTRA EQUIPMENT

19cm plastic flowerpot
17-18cm plastic bowl (strong, but thin enough to stick a cocktail stick through)
7-10 cocktail sticks
7-10 cupcake cases
Green and pink tissue paper
PVA glue
5 piping bags

METHOD

Preheat to oven to 180˚C. Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, beating in well. Add the flour and vanilla extract. Split the mixture equally into two bowls. Leave one mixture as is and add the cocoa powder to the other. In a greased cupcake tin, spoon a large tablespoon of the mixture into each hole. You should have six plain cakes and six chocolate cakes. Bake for 25-30 mins until they spring back when touched.

While the cakes are in the oven, prepare the pot to hold your cakes. Place the plastic bowl upside down inside the flower pot. Place the cupcake cases on the bowl, moving around and placing until you have an arrangement you like. Don't do any on top of the bowl, yet. You can have as many in place as you like, it all depends on the design you choose. Once you've chosen, poke a cocktail stick through each cupcake case, then remove the cases and leave the cocktail sticks in. Lift the bowl up, glue around it's edge and place back inside the flowerpot. Put aside and allow to set and stick.

When the cakes are cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool a little before removing from the tray and placing on a wire cooling rack. Once cool, cut off the tops so they are flat. Set aside.

Using two shades of green tissue paper, tear off strips and arrange and glue them around and over the plastic bowl until is mostly covered, leaving the protruding cocktail sticks showing. Place a large piece of pink tissue paper on top of the bowl, gluing it down. Place smaller pink strips randomly like leaves in amongst the green tissue paper. Place the cakes onto their cocktail sticks, assuring they sit comfortably over the tissue paper and are relatively secure. Remove the cakes.

Make the buttercream. Soften the butter a little in the microwave, then whip with an electric hand mixer until smooth. Add the vanilla extract, then the icing sugar bit by bit until a light, fluffy consistency and the mixture stands in stiff peaks when you lift out the beaters.

Separate the buttercream into 3 bowls. Zest the orange into one and add orange food colouring until a pale, pastel orange. Add purple food colouring to one other bowl, and pink to the other until both are pale, pastel colours.

Using a Wilton 2D tip, pipe pink roses onto the plain cakes and orange roses onto half of the chocolate cakes. Using a leaf nozzle, on the rest of the chocolate cakes, except one or two depending on how many cakes you are placing on top of the bowl/bouquet, pipe leaves in a circle around the edge of the cake, building up in circles inwards.

On the last cake(s) left, pipe two circles of purple leaves, one of orange and then a final one of pink.

Place the finished cakes back on their cocktail sticks. Leave the specially piped cakes with multicoloured petals until last. Poke a cocktail stick(s) through the pink tissue paper and through the top of the bowl and sit the final cakes on top. For extra decoration, and to finish, add some small, fake, colourful flowers.

I'd been wanting to make one of these cupcake bouquets for a while now, and Ellesha's success was a perfect excuse. I was so happy with how it turned out in the end. The roses look polished and realistic, like real flowers in an actual bouquet. The purple flowers contrast well and look impressive despite how easy they are to do. Most of the good comments I got on this creation was on how great the purple flowers look! A simple cupcake recipe can so easily be transformed into something special with a little imagination and some piping work.

Speaking of piping work, this was a great practice of my skills. Whilst I've been piping roses for a long time and have perfected those, the smaller petal design is completely new to me and it was a great learning experience figuring out the right angle at which to pipe, how big to make them and how many were needed to fill a cake without overwhelming the design. So many of the things I make these days are a way for me to practice and hone my skills and this bouquet is something I can really be proud of.

I'll definitely be making one of these again, trying all different kinds of flower shapes, and I hope whoever receives it loves it just as much as Ellesha did!

Have you ever made a cupcake bouquet? What are your experiences with piping flowers?