Rose Cupcakes

                I thought I’d continue this week with another cupcake from the What’s New, Cupcake, the sequel to Hello, Cupcake book!  I made these the weekend of my sister's wedding (they were for those of us staying at a beach house together).

                Make your favorite cupcakes.  Again, it doesn’t matter what kind, but I did specifically bake them in red cupcake liners.  It helps with the flower effect.

                To ice the cupcakes and make the flowers, you will need to gather a few things.

Ingredients

Swedish fish

Red sugar

White icing (doesn’t matter what kind)

Green tootsie roll fruit rolls

White sugar**

Rolling pin

                Start by icing the top of the cupcake with white icing.  You don’t need a tremendous amount of icing, but don’t really skimp on it either.

                Carefully roll the edge of each cupcake in the red sugar so that you have a thin sugar line just above the cupcake liner.

                Place some white sugar on the counter and put a Swedish fish in it.  Roll the fish with the rolling pin so that it flattens out, doesn’t look much like a fish anymore, and the gooey inside starts sticking to all the sugar.

** - I used both cubed white sugar and granulated white sugar for these.  In the picture above, the left hand flowers were rolled in cubed white sugar while the right hand ones were rolled in granulated sugar.  I personally think the cubed white sugar looks better.

                For each cupcake, roll out 3 - 5 fish.

                Roll one flattened fish up into a spiral and place it in the center of the iced cupcake.

                Add other flattened fish around it to create a flower.  Keep adding flattened fish around the center spiral until you feel the look is finished.

                To make the leaves, find the green tootsie roll in your fruity tootsie roll bag.  Unwrap several and microwave them for a few seconds so that they soften.  Cut each in half and roll out each half with the rolling pin.  Pick up either side of a rolled tootsie roll and pinch the ends together.  Stick inside the icing so it is held in place.

                The What’s New, Cupcake book has you also make some cupcakes in green liners.  These can be used to make stems with green jelly beans and more green tootsie roll leaves.  I didn’t have a large enough box (the book suggests placing them all in a rose box) to make the stems so I just went with all roses.

                It’s a lot of sugary stuff on one little cupcake, but they look so cute!