Peggy's Baking Corner - Sunflower Cupcakes & Cakes
by Peggy Weaver
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Supplies needed for the Sunflower Cupcakes:
1 batch of Devil’s Chocolate Cupcakes - Also can use your favorite recipe for 2 dozen cupcakes.
Decorating Tip #352 - I have 2 of them because I'm lazy and don't want to keep washing while I'm working.
Decorating Tip #5
3 Couplers for the 3 tips
3 each (10-inch) piping bags - You can use (1) one if you are willing to wash between color changes. Another option is to use the disposable bags. You could also use your parchment paper and cut into triangles to make your own piping bags.
Food Gel Colors - It is a liquid Gel) in
Egg Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Willow Green, and Chocolate Brown. You could
also make your life easier by purchasing the Wilton’s Icing in a Tube.
You would need 3 tubes of Yellow, 1 of the Leaf Green, 1 Brown if you
are making 2 dozen cupcakes.
Personally, I don’t much care for the taste of tube icing so I prefer to make my own buttercream. Also, you won’t be able to get the varied colors of yellow that you can get from making your own batch of Buttercream Icing. NOTE: Don’t forget you will still need the tip and couplers for the tubes but you can pipe directly from the tube and save on the piping bags and a lot of the clean up.
1 batch of white
Buttercream Icing
(click on the underlined for the Buttercream Icing Recipe)
Bake 2
dozen cupcakes and cool completely.
We are
not going to cover the cupcakes with the traditional coating of white
icing. The sunflowers will be enough and the chocolate cupcake peeking
out from under the flower is a pretty contrast.
You will need 4 bowls
to prepare your colored icing. Divide your icing into 6 parts:
In one bowl, you will use 2 parts of your icing to make a dark, intense, Egg Yellow.
In another bowl you will use 2 parts of the icing that will be a light shade of Lemon Yellow.
In a third bowl, use 1 part icing to make a Willow Green.
The last bowl will be Chocolate Brown.
Prepare the Willow
Green icing bag first with your # 352 tip. Fill it to only 2/3 of the
way for ease of handling.
Prepare the Sunflower Yellow Piping bag with the #352 tip. Drop into the bag about 2 tablespoons of Egg yellow and 1 tablespoon of Lemon Yellow icing, etc. until the bag is 2/3 full. The reason we are doing a two-colored yellow is because the different shades of yellow will give you the varied colors that you would get on a natural flower. You are adding highlights and shadows to the petals. This little trick will greatly improve the look of your flower and give it the “Wow” effect.
Last but not least, use your #5 tip and fill your last piping bag with the Chocolate Brown icing.
To
make it easier for me, I mark my cupcakes so that I have an idea how
place my flower petals.
You don’t have to do this step but it sure
makes your life easier. I also use this technique on many of the
flower cakes that I decorate. It gives me and idea of the flower
layout in advance.
Use a 1” cookie or biscuit cutter to
just lightly mark the top of the cupcake.
Back to:
Peggy's Baking Corner Home Page
Check out some of Peggy Weaver's many Cake Decorating Articles, Tutorials, and Q&A pages below.
Fondant Icing/Covering:
Fondant Icing 101
(Recipe and Tutorial on making & using fondant icing)
Fondant Recipes
Making Fondant
Icing
Bubbles in the
Fondant
Covering Cakes
with Fondant Icing
Decorating Cakes with Fondant Icing
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Now, if you are
going to freeze the cake, as many folks do until
the first anniversary, yes go ahead and
freeze. The cake will not look as beautiful as
it did originally but you just have to keep the
idea in mind that it was perfect on the day of
the wedding. |
Buttercream Icing/Covering:
Buttercream Icing 101
(Recipe and Tutorial on making & using buttercream icing)
Buttercream Recipes
Decorating
with Buttercream
Assembling Cakes/Wedding Cakes
Covering Wedding Cakes with Fondant
Decorating Wedding Cakes
(Lots of Q&A's on decoration a wedding cake)
Other Cake Baking and Decoration Topics:
(The idea page has photos only and no detailed decorating instructions.)
If
you’d like to practice, you can try doing a few “dry runs” on the bottom
end of a drinking glass. Pretend the round, flat bottom is the top of
the cupcake. You can turn/spin the glass as needed for your piping
ease. By turning the glass and/or your cupcake, you will have a free
flowing look to your flower. The more relaxed you are the more
professional the look.
You have a couple of choices here. I
usually use the color for practicing that I will use the least of in my
decorating. In this case, it is the brown color or you can make a little
extra icing just for the purpose of practice.
Using the Green
colored icing first, place your tip at about a 45 degree angle along the
marked circle in the center of the cupcake. You will have the metal part
of the V on the top and the “slits” to the side.
Squeeze the bag and the icing will
start to flow and ripple. Pull the tip away from the center toward the
edge. As you are pulling away from the marked circle, slowly relax your
pressure on your piping bag and the tip of the leaf will turn into a
point from the lack of pressure. Let the leafs and points gently twist,
turn, or even stick up a bit into the air. This adds
realism to your work.
Repeat the procedure for each leaf. Vary the number of leaves on each cupcake 2, 3 or 4, just like you’d find in nature.
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If you have any additional questions or comments that have not been answers in the categories above, Peggy will try to answer them for you. Email Peggy: (just click on the underlined): Peggy Weaver.
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Looking for fondant icing tools and/or equipment and Gum Paste to help you decorate your cakes using MM (Marshmallow) Fondant Icing?
Using the
piping bag filled with the Yellow icings, pipe 7 or 8 big colored petals
from the marked circle out. Some of the petals will be on top of the
green leaves. Let some of the tips “float” in the air.
Then pipe 4 or 5 smaller petals as the top layer.
Remember, don’t worry if they aren’t evenly spaced. Mother Nature rarely makes flowers totally symmetrical.
Now all you have to do is to eat your cupcakes and of course, clean up the kitchen!
Make a few of the flowers on the cupcake look different by having the view from the side instead of face on:
Mark your 1-inch circle on the cupcake. Now imagine your cupcake is divided into halves.
Pipe 2 or 3 green leaves as you did in the previous instructions. On one half of the cupcake, pipe 5 to 6 yellow petals on top of the leaves. You will be encroaching on your marked circle and slowly covering it up in the next steps. Make another shorter, smaller row of yellow petals on top of the first row.
Pipe a few brown dots to look like Sunflower Seeds. Hold your chocolate brown piping bag at a 45 degree angle when you pipe the dots so that they tip in the same direction as the petals. Pipe 2 more little rows of petals that stand up in the air and even bent a bit over the tops of the seeds.
The last step is to make the flowers Sepal. All you have to do is pipe a few more green leaves at the outside edge, also waving in the air and bent over the second group of petals
Have fun - Peg