Red Velvet Cupcakes Flower Bouquet

I love making cupcake flowers. I'm not really a flower person. Never appreciated the smell cuz they tend to give me migraines! I can count the number of times my husband has given me flowers on one hand cuz he knows I'm not a flower person. I do remember a time when we were still dating though. I was working at a Deli back then, you know, slicing meat, making sandwiches. I looked up from behind the counter and there he was, smiling shyly at me, conspicuously carrying a backpack. Then suddenly, he whipped out a dozen blue roses! And the roses had their stems cut short so that they would fit in his backpack! Haha! My coworkers thought he was so sweet. I was happily embarrassed and definitely flattered. And the roses were blue! My favourite colour. Why did he have to chop the roses' stems to fit them into his back pack, you might ask? Well, it's because he made the 25 km journey from his place all the way to see me, on his bicycle!!! Because the darn buses were on strike!!! Awww young love.

Flower Cupcakes

Anyway, back to the flower cupcakes. Best part about them is, unlike actual flowers, they don't have a floral smell and they taste as good as they look! I made two dozen red velvet cupcakes, and frosted them using vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I really wanted to use cream cheese frosting, but was afraid that it would slide off the cupcakes once assembled, especially in the heat.

Roses, Chrysanthemums & Hydrangeas

I made 4 different styles of flowers, just like the first time I made a cupcake bouquet. I did yellow chrysanthemums using piping tip no. 81, pink roses using piping tip no. 104, blue and purple hydrangeas with a hint of white in the centre using piping tip 1B, and star-tip roses, using a 1M piping tip. You can learn how to pipe the two-toned hydrangeas and the rest of the flowers from my post here.

Pretty and yummy flower cupcakes

Now, the lesson learned from last time is that this cupcake bouquet does not travel well once fully assembled! So this time, I assembled on site, where the party was. It was at a super busy restaurant and there was no room at all inside for me to work, so I ended up going out back, with the lovely ants and mosquitoes to keep me company. Luckily I was prepared cuz I brought an entire roll of kitchen paper towels with me. I had already prepared the flower pot at home so all I had to do was stick the cupcakes on. To prepare the pot, I wrapped it in some flower wrapping paper & then tied some pretty ribbon on it (I actually had to google how to do that!). Then I filled a small Ziplock bag full of water and put that into another Ziplock bag and used that to weigh down the pot. Of course, one could use easily use rocks but I didn't have any. Then I glued a 6" foam sphere onto the pot.  

Flower cupcake ball!

I used two toothpicks per cupcake to stab them onto the foam sphere. There was room for 2-3 more cupcakes at the back of the finished arrangement, so I think 27 cupcakes would fit just nicely on this size sphere. Make sure to angle the toothpicks upwards for the cupcakes at the rim of the sphere so that they don't just fall off. Start from the bottom and work your way up and around the sphere. 

Flower Cupcake Bouquet

It turned out that the restaurant was too full to accommodate the birthday party without an hour's wait, so the party ended up moving to a different venue. Thankfully, the cupcake bouquet held up in the car ride over and none of the cupcakes were lost!