Mother's Day is coming up, and it's time to figure out how to best celebrate your hard working mom. A card or thoughtful present is always nice, and a bouquet of flowers is a lovely way to show that you care. However, something even better than flowers is baked goods! As much as I love flowers, nothing competes with homemade sweets. Here's how to make a pretty and delicious cupcake bouquet for mom.
How to Make a Cupcake Bouquet
To make a cupcake bouquet, start off with collecting the necessary supplies. You'll need a flower pot, styrofoam ball, toothpicks, cupcake liners, buttercream, a Wilton piping tip, a piping bag, and of course- cupcakes! Many people choose green cupcake liners to emulate the green stem of a flower, and you should choose your buttercream color you'd want your "flowers" to be.
Now it's time to make the cupcakes! You can make a smaller version with mini cupcakes or go for the classic size. Preheat the oven and line your cupcake tin with cupcake liners. Make your cupcakes, following your recipe. Here's a yummy vanilla cupcake recipe for a classic flavor- for a gluten free version, use gluten free flour. Make buttercream frosting, following your frosting recipe. Here's one featuring vanilla extract, butter, and sugar. Leave your frosting at room temperature so that it'll be easy to pipe. You can make your cupcakes or your frosting ahead of time if that's most convenient.
Cupcake Liners
Once your cupcakes and frosting are prepared, place your styrofoam ball into your flower base and push it down firmly until secure. Push two toothpicks into the very top of the ball, and secure one cupcake atop them.
Now start placing cupcakes around the bottom sides of the ball where it touches the vase. Starting at the bottom helps with balance. Continue using two toothpicks per cupcake for stability, and put the cupcakes as close together as you can to cover the ball.
Add cupcakes all over the ball until fully covered. Now it's time for decoration! The goal is for your cupcakes to have lovely buttercream flowers on top of them. Fit your piping bag with the Wilton 1M nozzle tip and fill bag 3/4 full of frosting. Holding the pipe straight down above the center of the cupcake. Make a rose petal design, using pressure and moving quickly around the center until the surface is covered. When you're finished, release pressure and gently trail off.
Using this technique should leave you with a beautiful rose cupcake! Cake decorating techniques can be difficult it it's your first time, so watching the video tutorial above might be the best way to go. Pipe all the cupcakes, doing the ones at the bottom last. Fill in any gaps between your flowery, beautiful cupcakes with flowers, tissue paper or babies breath.
Refrigerate your DIY bouquet until you're ready to gift it. When you serve this edible centerpiece, warn your guests about the toothpicks before they dig in! Not only is this perfect for Mother's Day, it makes a lovely present for Easter, Valentine's Day or a baby shower. For a bridal shower, make your bouquet festive with sprinkles and glitter!
