Cupcake Flower Bouquet

My friend was throwing a surprise party for her mom's 60th birthday and she wanted something special for the cake. Something that had flowers. I have been wanting to try and make a cupcake bouquet ever since I saw this video on YouTube so I was very excited to make this for my friend's mom! 

Cupcake Flower Bouquet

The cupcakes were the ever-popular Devil's Food Chocolate cake, except I used all-purpose four instead of the usual cake flour so that they would be a little more firm to be able to stay up in the bouquet. Nerd fact: I usually only use cake flour in my cakes because it has a lower protein content than all-purpose flour and therefore produces a finer and more delicate crumb, with a softer texture.

Hydrangeas

I whipped up two batches of vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream because I needed a lot to frost all 84 cupcakes. I wanted to make 3 types of flowers for the bouquet: hydrangeas, chrysanthemums & roses. First, to get the hydrangeas' two-toned, I dyed some of that buttercream a light blue and scooped it into a piping bag and smeared it only around the sides of the bag, leaving a big hollow in the middle. Then I scooped white buttercream into the middle of the bag. Using piping tip no. 1D, Each flower was piped onto a third of the cupcakes to make these sweet hydrangeas.

Chrysanthemums

The chrysanthemums were made using piping tip no. 81 and some yellow buttercream. These were simple but time consuming to make since each squeeze of the piping bag only yielded a narrow, thin petal. I think each cupcake took about 40 or so squeezes. My hand was tired after making about 30 of these.

Open Roses

Lastly, using petal tip no. 104 and some of that buttercream dyed pink, the roses were piped petal by petal onto the remaining cupcakes. Actually, half of the remaining cupcakes. To add a 4th style of flower, for the last bunch of cupcakes, I used Wilton's 1M piping tip and piped on some simple swirl roses. 

Swirl Roses

Now, to assemble the bouquet, I used a 9" styrofoam ball glued onto a large flower pot and a whole bunch of toothpicks. I put the decorated cupcakes in the fridge to firm them up a bit so that it would be easier to handle them during assembly. Starting at the base where the styrofoam ball meets the flower pot, two toothpicks were stuck into the styrofoam at roughly a 45-degree angle, which was then used to stab support a cupcake. After assembling a circle of cupcakes in this manner around the bottom of the styrofoam, the rest of the bouquet was completed, building layer by layer. This job is pretty messy and the buttercream got all over my fingers, so prepare to get sticky!

This big flower bouquet required about 50 or so cupcakes to assemble. I made a second bouquet with the remaining cupcakes. I didn't have another styrofoam sphere around, so I had to hand carve down a styrofoam box! That was a big mess. Styrofoam everywhere!! Anyway, here's the 2nd, smaller bouquet. 

My friend's sister came to pick up the bouquets and bring them to the party. Transporting them was a huge challenge!! She had the bigger bouquet clamped between her feet while holding onto the smaller bouquet! I couldn't stop laughing. 

photo courtesy of @sleepyscarlet

I'm so glad she and her friend were such good sports about the whole thing. They lost about 3-4 cupcakes on the trip down, with buttercream getting all over her toes! I'm glad they managed to patch up the cupcakes and have a sweet bouquet to give to the birthday girl! [with the lights dimmed low and nice birthday candle, who could tell anything was amiss? ;)]

Happy 60th Birthday, Mrs. Khoo!