A Lovely Bouquet of Flowers

I've already used my cake kitchen again!

My co-worker, Diana, retired this January after many years of service.  She worked in the office through 4 or 5 different county attorneys.  Because of COVID, we couldn't have a retirement party for her, but we still wanted to give her a special send off.

I was in charge of cupcakes (the COVID friendly cake).  I wanted to do something pretty that wasn't super complicated and I discovered the cupcake bouquet!

I started by making yellow cake and adding green food coloring so there would be this yellow color sticking out under the frosting flowers.

We weren't able to have Christmas with my in-laws this year but my mother-in-law sent us some goodies in this beautiful basket.  it was perfect for the display.  I bought a foam half circle and covered it with green tissue paper.

I filled half the cupcakes with butterscotch pudding.  Then I colored the icing and made the flowers.  Some of these I learned a long time ago and others I learned from youtube videos.  I didn't make enough icing to frost all of the cupcakes, so if I do it again, I would probably do one and a half batches.  But it made enough for the bouquet.

Next I stuck toothpicks in the cupcakes and then stuck them into the foam circle.  The problem was that the filled ones wouldn't hold up! 

I ended up putting the filled ones around the bottom edge and the regular ones on the top.  Next time I would skip the filling so it would be easier to place them.  Next I tore up strips of dark green crepe paper and put it in between the cupcakes to look like leaves.

As you know, leaves are my favorite thing to pipe because they just add so much depth to flowers.  The crepe paper here did the same thing and really made it look spectacular.

If you don't look too closely, it looks like I'm delivering a basket of flowers!

Up until lunch, the cupcakes sat on Diana's desk next to the real flowers.  A bunch of people did a double take before realizing they were cupcakes!

This turned out so well.  It looked adorable, it was bright and cheery, and it was fairly easy to make.  I would definitely do this one again.

 Happy retirement, Diana!