How to make a butter-cream rose cupcake bouquet

What you will need

• Vase
  You need a solid base with some weight in it. If the base is too light, the bouquet will be top heavy and probably fall over. You can use any kind of vase, bucket, or basket for the base. If it is a bit light try adding some glass rocks or other kinds of weights to the bottom before starting.
  I chose a very heavy glass vase for this example
• Weights (if the vase is not heavy enough to support the cupcake flowers)
• Skewers
• Polystyrene
  You could use a ball from a craft store, or just some broken up pieces from a polystyrene box
• Tissue paper, cellophane, or other decorative paper
• 2 dozen mini cupcakes
• Butter-cream icing
• Piping bag
• Rose piping tip
• Fondant leaves - 4 Large leaves and 10 smaller rose leaves
  (see tutorial 'How to make fondant leaves')
• Floral tape

Step 1

Line your vase with some cellophane, tissue paper, or other decorative paper. I used tissue paper. 

If you are using a vase that might be too light, add some weights on top of the paper.

Step 2

Fill the vase with some polystyrene. I broke off some pieces from a left over box insert and wedged them in. It doesn't matter what shape it is. It does need to be high enough for your skewers to reach, but not higher than the top of the vase.

Wedge it in nice and tight so it won't move

Polystyrene wedged into vase 

Step 3

Insert skewers into the base of the cupcakes. I found some half length bbq skewers at my local cheap store. You can cut regular skewers in half or you can use them longer. Just make sure your polystyrene is lower in the vase if you are using long skewers.

The flat end of the skewer goes into the bottom of the cupcake. The sharp end will go into the polystyrene

Place the cupcakes onto the skewers at different angles. I think it gives a more realistic look to the bouquet if the cupcakes (flowers) are all a little bit different. You can adjust them a little once you have piped your flowers, to suit your arrangement, if they don't sit quite right.

Step 4

Make some butter-cream icing/frosting. Separate into smaller bowls. Add food colouring to make each bowl of icing the colour you want for your flowers.

buttercream icing, red and pink

You can see I didn't mix the colours completely. This is so the flowers have a bit of a streak to them when I pipe them. If you want more of a block colour in your flowers you can certainly mix the colors better.

Step 5

Using a piping bag and rose piping tip, pipe a butter cream rose on each cupcake.

Here is a link to a great Youtube video demonstrating how to pipe a buttercream rose.

I chose to only use roses but there are tonnes of different flowers you can pipe using buttercream, and they would all look lovely in an arrangement like this.

It is best to make more roses (piped flowers) than you will need for your arrangement so you can choose the best ones, and you have plenty of 'spares' if you squash/bump/drop a cupcake.  Any left-overs go great with a cuppa for morning tea!

Step 6

Make 5 skewers with 2 fondant rose leaves on each and make 4 skewers with one larger fondant leaf on each.
Here is my tutorial on how to do this 'How to make fondant leaves'

Attach the wired leaves onto the skewer using floral tape.

Step 7

Now you have all your pieces you can start putting the arrangement together.

Start at the front of the vase and carefully push each rose and the rose leaf skewers into the polystyrene. 

Make sure you put each of the roses as close together as you can without squashing the butter cream.

Use the smaller leaves to help hide any gaps between the flowers.

There is no set way to put the flowers into the vase. Put each of them where you think they look good and if you put one in and it's not quite right, carefully pull it out and try again.

Keep adding flowers until the vase is mostly full and you are happy with the placement of the flowers.

Step 8

When all the flowers have been placed in the vase, add the large leaves to the back of the arrangement. Make sure they are high enough so they are poking out from behind the flowers and add a bit of a border, highlighting the roses.

I hope this tutorial has been easy to follow and has inspired you to make your own mini-cupcake bouquet.
If there are any steps that need further explanation, please contact me and I will do my best to explain it better.

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