Hydrangea Cupcakes

Hydrangea bushes are in full bloom all over my neighborhood right now.  I love all varieties of hydrangeas, but my favorite is this traditional shaped, blue-purple color.  I picked a few this weekend and brought them inside as inspiration for cupcakes.  I’ve seen cupcakes that resembled hydrangea flowers before, but I’ve never given it a try.  It was much easier than I’d imagined and I was very happy with the results!

Hydrangea Cupcakes

~ Directions ~

I made a batch of my favorite chocolate cupcakes and delicious vanilla cream cheese frosting.  Then I colored half of the frosting blue, and half purple (mixing a few shades of blues and purples to get a good color match to the real hydrangeas).  When making the frosting, use very little cream (less than 1 tablespoon), because the coloring will add some liquid, and you need the frosting to be pretty stiff to hold a nice shape.

If you’d like to match other hydrangeas, you could certainly use other color options, like light blue and medium blue, or two shades of pink.  But I do think that frosting these with two colors (instead of just one) really added to the effect.

I filled my piping bag with the two colors of frosting, side by side.  Once your bag is filled (1/2 to 2/3 full), you may want to just squeeze some frosting into a bowl, until you see both colors coming out.

Then, using a Wilton 2D tip (a large closed star tip), I piped large, loose star shapes around the edge of the cupcake, and then filled in the center.  If the frosting starts getting too soft (no longer holds a nice shape), then put the whole bag of frosting in the fridge for 15-20 minutes to let the frosting to firm up a bit.

Now I want to plan a pretty tea party just so I can make these again!

Cookie Cutter Giveaways- Winners!

Festive 4th of July Treats

Here’s a little round up of some 4th of July treats I’ve made in the past.  I thought they might be fun inspiration for you to make some special treats for your celebrations.

4th of July cookies- HERE is the link to my sugar cookie recipe, and I’ve posted some basic decorating help HERE and HERE.

A few tips on the designs above…

For the ones with the multi color border I piped a stiff consistency icing around the edge of the cookie, then sprinkled some red, white and blue non pareil sprinkles on the line of (still wet) icing.  After the border is dry (wait at least an hour, maybe more), fill in the center of the cookie with a flood consistency icing.

The designs on the star cookies were accomplished by adding either dots or lines or red and blue icing onto a base of (still wet) white icing.  Then drag a toothpick any direction you want to create some fun designs.

Both of these Jello desserts involve layering any flavor of red jello, a layer of blue jello, and the layer in the middle is made by preparing a small box of lemon jello, put it in a bowl in the fridge until it thickens slightly and then fold (gently mix) in a 8oz. tub of Cool Whip.

Both the flag jello (above) and the layered cups (below) are topped with Cool Whip.  I love real whipped cream for most desserts, but Cool Whip holds up much better in the heat, so it’s more appropriate for these summer treats.

Here’s a couple All-American sweeties enjoying their patriotic jello.

One of my daughters (on the right) with two of her cousins.

Happy Independence Day!!

4th of July Cupcakes with Cookie Toppers

Last week I made a little batch of cupcakes and some cute 4th of July cookie toppers.  We don’t have any big party plans for the 4th this year, but these would sure be perfect for those of you who do.

The cookie toppers can be made a few days ahead of time (up to a week) and then you can just add them to some simple cupcakes (either homemade or store bought).

HERE is my tutorial on making mini cookie cupcake toppers.

For these ones you’ll need a small star shaped cookie cutter (if you don’t have one I’d try looking at Michael’s or Wal-mart).  And you’ll need some 4 inch lollipop sticks (like these ), also available at most craft stores.

You could certainly get a lot more detailed with these than I did.  But I think even these simple ones add a pretty festive touch.

The cupcakes are a simple (box mix) vanilla cupcake (sorry if I just crushed your image of me!) topped with my favorite vanilla cream cheese frosting (in warm weather add very little cream or liquid to the frosting, or it will be too soft to hold any shape).  I frosted these with my favorite 1M (large open star) tip.

Happy Birthday my dear sweet U.S.A!!

For those of you outside the U.S., you could certainly alter this idea with the colors of your home country.

{Another Giveaway!!!} Copper Cookie Cutters from Ecrandal