How To: Sunflower Cupcakes

I admit it, I've been a bit slack with the blog posts lately, but I have heaps more coming up to compensate! The first of which are these sunflower cupcakes which I made for a bridal shower. If you have a browse on the internet you will be able to find so many sunflower cupcakes, most being made using a whole Oreo on top. The petals are then piped around the edge of the cookie and, unless done well or made from fondant, tend to turn out a little droopy. So this is my take on a modern classic.

The way I made them was by starting with vanilla cupcakes and then levelling the top with some green vanilla icing. This gave me a flat surface to work with when piping the sunflower to prevent any drooping problems, while also providing a background for the sunflower so that you can't see any cake between the petals. I coloured my remaining icing yellow, then scooped about two thirds into a piping bag fitted with a leaf tip*, laying it flat so that the icing went up the side of the bag (sorry, I should have taken a photo of this step!). To add some more depth I added a small amount of orange to the rest of the icing (just enough to make some subtle colour variation) and scooped that along the length of the bag, so that it was on top of the yellow. Then for the fun part, which was piping the petals! Once I had practiced my technique a little bit on some baking paper, I piped two layers of petals around the edge of the cupcakes. Instead of using a whole Oreo for the middle of the cupcake, I crushed up some Oreos using a food processor and then carefully scooped about a tablespoon of crumbs into the middle of the petals - done!

*If you don't have a leaf tip, you can improvise by using a large ziplock bag, reinforcing one corner with a few layers of tape, and cutting a V out from the middle.