Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Cupcakes that Bloom: Chrysanthemum Cupcakes


With our batch of 24 cupcakes, my friend C and I decided to split half of them into the "pies" and half into this blooming chrysanthemum cupcakes. Both of these designs came from "What's New, Cupcake?" and they were flagged as " EZ" although I would flag it as beautiful and but putzy to make.

These cupcakes are stunning, frankly. They are indeed easy to make and they look great on a tiered plate or cupcake tree. In fact, I couldn't resist taking a ton of photos because they looked so great. So first, the basic how-to:

The petals are the biggest part that takes forever- however, it's really simple to do just time consuming. We bought a bag of white mini-marshmallows and a bag of the colored ones. We sorted the pink and yellow marshmallows ( which look surprisingly similar to the orange ones) for the pink and yellow flowers. Then, you cut the marshmallow on the diagonal to expose a sticky side and you dip the sticky inner part in fine sanding sugar as show in the photo. Each cupcake takes about 22 mini-marshmallows before you slice them. Because the marshmallow and frosting can dry out, we prepare them in the following order:

1. Count out your 22 mini marshmallows.
2. Quickly cut them on the diagonal.
3. Dip them in the sanding sugar.
4. Frost the base layer of frosting on the cupcake and place the petals in three rows starting from the outside ring first then creating the inner rings.
5. Pipe a swirl of frosting in the center.
6. Repeat for each cupcake.

The reason for doing this in the order is (1) you don't want the marshmallow sticky center to dry out before you dip them in the sugar so don't cut more than can quickly dip (2) you don't want to the frosting to harden before you place the petals so don't frost the cupcake until you are ready to place the petals.

We chose to create four different colors...yellow marshmallows with yellow sanding sugar.

Hot pink sanding sugar with light pink marshmallows...this had great contrast.

Bright blue sanding sugar and white marshmallows. Again great contrast.

The more subtle lavender sugar with the white marshmallows.

Finally, we arranged them with sour apple licorice to look like flowers on stems. Really sweet! I highly recommend this design but grab a friend and a good movie or soundtrack to pass the time as you slice and dip 22 marshmallows for each cupcake!