From various projects I'd given a go in the last weeks, I still had cupcakes in the freezer that were perfect for taking out a few at at time to try decorating techniques on.
I'll sort out the shopping lists per project - these are for cupcakes with piped sunflowers out of Oreo centers and fondant pinwheels and tulips on orange frosted choclate cupcakes.
When one of Kev's teachers had a birthday and celebrated it at school with the class, I thought this was the perfect chance to give a sunflower cupcake a try that I'd pinned (and pinned) on Pinterest.
For just the sunflower project printable version, click here
- Buttercream recipe - I really recommend using baker's powder sugar and buttercream mix to get a smooth and tasty buttercream that you can color, swirl and pipe in a bag. This base recipe also gives a rich and creamy base flavor. If you like, you can flavor the buttercream any number of ways, but I left it as is for this creation.
- leaf / petal tip (wilton 352)
- (disposable) piping bag
- Wilton (or Americolor) gel colors in shades of Golden Yellow and Orange
- Oreo cookies
If you google ''sunflower cupcakes'' you'll see any number of variations on this project. My goal was to have a realistic single color petal (also meant less work than two colors in one piping bag) surrounding the Oreo cookie.
Decorating Step by Step:
- I mixed the golden yellow and orange food colors in my (ivory) buttercream basis until I had a color that held up pretty well alongside some cut sunflowers I had in the house. You can do side by side colors in orange and yellow if you prefer. I wanted one even color so I could focus on the piping technique.
- Fill your piping bag about 2/3 full with the buttercream and the leaf tip attached.
- Place an Oreo cookie on the center of the cupcake using some buttercream as ''glue''.
- The leaf tip is like an inverted triangle, hold it at a 90 degree angle (so the points are on each side of the Oreo cookie) and pipe some buttercream against the Oreo cookie. when the buttercream is adhering to the Oreo, pull the tip away at a slight angle from the Oreo to get the ''petal'' shape.
- Repeat in a clockwise direction, with slightly less than a tip space between each petal. Once the bottom layer is complete, begin the second round, filling the spaces from the first layer. these will overlap slightly, so that the petal effect is realistic. Depending on the thickness of the Oreo, finish off with a third round.
This technique uses a fair amount of buttercream, and gives one big sunflower per cupcake. My piping bag was pretty well empty after these two (three petal layer each) cupcakes. I've seen (and want to try next) variations using mini oreos on top of a swirl of buttercream for more petite sunflowers.
For the Fondant Pinwheels and Tulips printable version, click here
Dutch Supporter Cakes Shopping List:
- Wilton (or Americolor) gel color in Orange
- (disposable) piping bag
- 1M tip (open star)
- large coupler (coupler is optional)
- Fondant in Red and Blue (pre colored) or color your own with gel colors
- Fondant punch set (stamps)
- small knife or straight edge cutting tool
- rolling pin
- silicon mat
- middle size square cut out
- Red, white and blue sprinkles
Since I already had the cupcakes and buttercream on hand, I started here with coloring the buttercream.
Decorating Step by Step:
- Using the orange color gel and a toothpick, add coloring until you have the desired shade and intensity. I went more for an orange sherbet color than full on Halloween orange - it's up to you!
- Place the colored butter cream into a prepared piping bag already fitted with a coupler (if you're going to use one)
- Add the 1M tip and the outside part of coupler and squeeze until the buttercream begins to come out without any air bubbles
- Pipe the buttercream starting from the outside inwards in slightly overlapping circles until you reach the center then lift up
- Add sprinkles and your choice of fondant decoration as a topper.
- Pinwheels Step by Step
- Roll out two equal amount of blue and red fondant slightly thicker than the desired final thickness
- Place the two colors of fondant on top of each other and roll them out together to desired thickness
- Using the middle sized square cutter, cut out the basic pinwheel shape
- From the middle point of each square, leave some space around and cut a diagonal line, about 2/3 out to each corner, creating four slanted cuts that leave the center space free
- Starting with one corner, fold it to the center, creating a triangle. Going counter-clockwise, fold down the next corner. Repeat until all four corners are folded towards the center. As you do this, the color on the bottom will come up, giving you two-tone pinwheels.
- Create a little circle of fondant in one of the colors and flatten it on top of the pinwheel to create the pin holding everything in place.
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| 2 colored Pinwheels and Tulip Stamps |
- Tulip Stamps Step by Step
- roll out both red and blue fondant to approx 1 1/2 inch width and similar thickness to the pinwheels above create rectangular ''ribbons'' using either a edging tool or a ruler and straight edge tool
- using the stamp tool with the thick tulip stamp, stamp the fondant with enough pressure to leave a full imprint, but not enough to ''punch'' the design out. It should leave a clear impression in the fondant but not break through anywhere
- repeat the design along the full ribbon, leaving a equal distance between designs (at least to the eye)
- repeat the process with the second color and then cut out rectangular shapes using the blunt edge of a knife or edge tool
- Apply two shapes (one in each color) to your cupcakes
