Cherry Blossom Cupcakes

For my 25th birthday I decided I wanted to make some cupcakes, as it was a good opportunity to use my new large star nozzled piping set! As my birthday is at the beginning of Spring, I thought a theme of cherry blossoms would be very fitting. The colours of dark brown, pink and white look quite elegant and beautiful together in cakes, so I couldn't wait to get started. I wanted two different styles of cupcake, so I decided upon a vanilla sponge base with two different toppings - pink vanilla piped buttercream and rich chocolate buttercream swirled with a palette knife. I found some rather lovely pink sugar flowers on CakesCookiesandCraftsShop, which I thought looked close enough to sakura blossoms to work. One day soon I will teach myself how to make my own sugarcraft flowers as they look amazing.

I wanted the buttercream to be a beautiful rich but pale pink, so I bought some Sugarflair food colouring in Pink, which came as a cute little tub of a very thick liquid, more akin to gel, much to my surprise! It was easy to mix into the icing and gave a beautiful even coloured result. Gorgeous! Another thing I finally bought myself was some proper edible glitter that actually sparkles. I chose an irredescent pink, which came out beautifully true to colour on pink frosting and on dark chocolate it showed up a wonderful purple colour, which was a lovely result.

Without further ado, here they are, my cherry blossom birthday cupcakes:

Vanilla sponge with chocolate buttercream

Vanilla sponge with pink vanilla buttercream

And here they are adorning my cake stand:

Successes: These were by far my most well received cakes so far (with the exception of the coveted peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes I made for my other half's birthday... pic to follow). Everyone liked the appearance and loved the taste, which makes for a happy Claire indeed! The chocolate buttercream was delicious - it's the first time I had made it using a Primrose bakery recipe - and I chucked a whole melted 70% cocoa Lindt Excellence bar of chocolate in it...boy it made a difference. It was light and rich at the same time. The sponge was a tried and tested recipe but it's always a relief when they turn out well! I might try a new sponge recipe next time just for a bit of variety to my baking. I loved decorating these ones, I'm so glad I took the time to invest in some better tools.

Failures: The piping of icing was not as easy as I had hoped - it took ages to get the icing in the bag and then when I did I had air bubbles in it, which made smooth piping a bit more tricky. I wasn't really sure what I was doing with my hands other than trying to make it swirly - I wanted it to be beautiful ice cream whippy style frosting, but I missed the mark a bit. I had also originally planned to break up the vanilla/vanilla combination by digging out a well in the top of the sponge, and then putting a spoonful of jam on there. I of course only remembered this after I had put the icing on them... *rolls eyes*

Ideas for the future: New sponge recipe, something more exciting perhaps? Learn how to pipe icing better! Implement the jam idea.