Sweet Edible Nature: Fondant Fruit and Frosting Flowers

For my latest cake decorating creation, I opted to make cupcakes, since it had been a while. I also wanted to make multiple flavors and decorations, something I've always loved about cupcakes. I think that's one of the reasons they're so popular; they can be easily catered to many different individuals.

I ended up settling on a little bit of a nature theme, since the person I was making these cupcakes for likes a lot of things in nature. I chose to make the cupcakes ahead of time in order to space things out a bit so that I wasn't trying to do everything in one day. It helped a lot!

Half of the cupcakes were vanilla, the other half were chocolate. I got both recipes from Pinterest (of course). The vanilla one was from a blog post called The Ultimate Cupcake Guide, in which the author tests different versions of the same recipe (changing only one variable each time) to see what makes the best cupcake. She seemed to really like the one in which she added an extra egg yolk to the recipe, so that's the one I went with. It was good; very flavorful and not overly sweet. However, the texture was a little dense for my taste. I think I will try the traditional recipe next time.

The chocolate recipe was from a blog post called A case of the horrible, no good cupcake day. I was a little nervous about them though, because when I mixed the batter the consistency was really thin, almost the opposite of the yellow cupcake batter, and I was worried they weren't going to bake right. But I triple checked the recipe and I hadn't made any mistakes so I decided to go with it. They turned out amazing! They were super moist, yet light and fluffy, and the chocolate flavor was rich but not too sweet. I will definitely use this again! They also paired really well with the vanilla frosting :)

A lot of these decorations, especially the flowers, were inspired by ones I had seen on Pinterest and really wanted to try. I don't like to replicate things exactly the way I see them though, just to challenge my own creativity.

Nature-themed cupcakes





Purple rosette

Blue drop flowers

Small pink rosettes

Pink layered flower

Fondant bluebird with fondant raspberry

The apple one, the cherry one and the pink rose one were my favorite ones to make. The apple cupcake was fun because I knew I was going to have to figure out how to shape the frosting so it looked like an apple, and I really liked texture and appearance from the red glitter and sprinkles. I also filled the center of that one with apple butter, which turned out really well.



Apple cupcake

 The cherry one was a little difficult, because I was trying to make the shape as realistic as possible. I like the way that whole cupcake turned out though. I like the simplicity of the design, and that it still looks visually appealing.



Fondant cherry topped cupcake

 

I like the pink rose one because it was a design that I just threw together, without ever having tried it before. I think it turned out really pretty, and a little old-fashioned, which I like sometimes.



Pink rose with purple border

The one with the little flowers on the grass was actually a little more difficult to make than I anticipated. I think the problem was that I should have changed the consistency of the frosting for that particular frosting tip (Wilton grass tip 233). I had to apply too much pressure in order to get the frosting to come out and therefore wasn't able to hold it as steady. So the pieces of grass are not all the same width from top to bottom. I should have added a little water or milk to thin it out.

 

Pink star flowers on grass.

I think in the future I will do more than one of the same cupcake, versus all different cupcakes. The reason I didn't do that this time is because I was so anxious to try different designs and I need the practice, but there were just too many different tips required, combined with too many different colors. It made for a big hassle and a lot of clean-up! I still had a lot of fun making them though, and it was worth it because I know more about what to do - and what not to do - for next time.