Faking Fancy Cupcake Wedding Centrepieces #4

If you're looking for a more real looking flower centrepiece that can double as dessert, this is the perfect arrangement for you.  You can make this as fancy and elaborate as you like with leaves, butterflies and other accents, but here's the basic gist of how you create a cupcake bouquet centrepiece.

For the cupcakes, if you want to have a real looking bouquet of flowers, you'll need to have them iced to look like flowers.  Feel free to mix up the sizes of your cupcake for visual interest.

To create the bouquet you'll need:

• low rise glass cylinder vase
• half ball Styrofoam circle (that fits snug in the base of your vase)
• wooden dowels (cut down so that when you stick it in the Styrofoam an inch or so is sticking out)
• tissue paper (you can use any colour, but white is the most subtle)

Step 1: Bake, cool and ice your cupcakes.

Step 2: Cover your Styrofoam half ball with the tissue paper and place in the vase flat side down.

Step 3: Push a wooden dowel in the tissue paper wrapped half ball of Styrofoam.  Push in one dowel at a time and push a cupcake on top of the piece of dowel sticking out.  Continue sticking in dowels and cupcakes until you have covered the entire surface to your satisfaction. I start at the edge of the vase and work my way around.

Step 4: Next, add in your accents to dress it up like the leaves and butterflies in the bouquet shown above.

Continue reading...

Chocolate Sundae Cupcake

This is a fun cupcake you can breakout in the summer and not be afraid it will melt into a puddle.  It's also a great cupcake for those who LOVE icing.  For this recipe you'll need a few ice cream sundae fixins and...

• Chocolate Cake Mix (plus ingredients to make the cake...usually eggs, oil, and water...but you won't need the water for this one!)
• Store bought Vanilla Icing (you may want to double your icing depending how big you want your ice cream scoop to be)
• Room Temperature Whipping Cream (enough to replace the water your cake mix calls for plus another 1/2 of a cup for your chocolate sauce)
• 1 Cup Milk Chocolate Chips
• Butter (room temperate...around 1/2 cup....but it's up to you)
• Icing Sugar (1/4 of a cup for your chocolate sauce and more for your icing if you'd like)
• Garnish Ides: chopped peanuts, maraschino or fresh cherries, mini coloured spoon

And here's the recipe...

Step 1: Preheat your oven as directed on the cake mix package.  Add all the ingredients your Chocolate Cake Mix calls for EXCEPT for the water.  Instead of the water, replace the called for amount with Whipping Cream - feel free to whip your cream a little before you add it. Mix the ingredients together until it is smooth.

Step 2: Spoon the batter into your cupcake liners and bake as directed on the package.  Once they are done baking, let them cool completely.

Step 3: While your cupcakes are cooling, start mixing your icing.  Using you mixer, throw in the Store Bought Vanilla Icing and butter on high until smooth. Give your icing a taste and if it's too buttery for your liking or too runny, add in some icing sugar. Place your icing in the fridge so that it's easy to scoop!

Step 4: Now it's time to make your chocolate sauce. You'll want to make this around 10-20 minutes before you  ice your cupcakes because you want it to be warm enough to go on easily and look like chocolate sauce.  Melt one cup of Milk Chocolate Chips in a saucepan on low.  Slowly whisk in your room temperature cream. Turn off heat and whisk in 1/4 of a cup of icing sugar (you can sift if you want, I'm lazy and didn't) and mix until smooth. Stir for a few minutes off the burner and let stand until warm (so no longer HOT).

Step 5: It's assembling time. To get the full effect of the ice cream, you'll want to use an ice cream scoop.  Using your ice cream scoop, top your cupcake with a scoop of icing.  It will be a lot of icing, so feel free to spoon some of the icing out of the centre of the scoop before adding to the top of the cupcake. For the chocolate sauce, take your lukewarm chocolate sauce and put in a piping bag with a small-medium sized tip opening or a Ziploc bag with the end cut off will work too. Drizzle the chocolate sauce on top - this sauce should be thick enough to stay where you drizzle it and firm up more once it cools. To garnish sprinkle chopped peanuts and top with a cherry.  If you wanted to get really creative you could track down little mini coloured spoons and stick them in the icing.

Happy Faking!

Continue reading...

Faking Fancy Cupcake Wedding Centrepieces #3

Here's a cute cupcake centrepiece that can incorporate your wedding colours, act as dessert and be used for an unconventional toast that is kid and adult approved.  For this piece you could buy or rent the glassware or simply buy some plastic glasses instead.

To create this centrepiece simply fill a Pilsner beer glass approximately half way with your favourite candy that is conveniently in the colours of your wedding.  Take your cupcake and place it in the glass on top of the candy.  To add more pizazz you could easily add a fun themed cupcake pick and  a personalized tag for each of your guests.

To bring the centrepeice together, you could place the candy and cupcake filled glassware on top of a square or circle shaped mirror, loosely wind some ribbon around the base of the glasses, add tea light candles and/or create a single flower arrangement in a larger Pilsner glass and put it in the centre of the cupcake toast glasses arrangement.

Continue reading...