Flower Pot Cupcakes - now with Sunflowers!

Because the first batch just wasn't enough!

Well, that, and the fact that some of my work friends saw the last set of these I did - possibly because I constantly yak about my baking to everyone who will listen, or who is forced into listening because they happen to sit near me.

In any case, a few of my coworkers asked if I could make them some flower pot cupcakes, and I was happy to oblige! I put together a set of four just like the ones in this post for my good pal Linda, and when Nate, who sits near Linda heard about it, well, he just had to have some, too.

His order wasn't quite as simple though. Not only did he want a full dozen cupcakes, he wanted sunflowers on some of them! Sunflowers! I tried to explain that sunflowers grow wild and free on great towering stalks, but he just had to have them in little pots.

A new challenge appears!

As you can see, I did find a way to create sunflowers, but the going was not as smooth as I'd hoped. You see, I'd spotted the perfect cookie cutter for the sunflower petals at Bulk Barn just the week before, so I had figured out in my head the perfect, easy way to make the sunflowers.

Except when I got to Bulk Barn, every last one of those cutters was gone. Every. Last. One.

Seriously.

Which meant, I had to custom cut all of it - every petal!

I started with a round cutter and used the pointed end of a spade-shaped cutter to turn the circle into a sunburst shape (if you have a sunburst shaped cutter, you get to save lots of time on this step!)

I used a smaller circle cutter to make an impression to outline the middle of the flower. Then I removed the cutter and arranged the petals around the center, and used the cutter again to trim away any petals that had stuck too close to the middle.

Next, I used a plastic baggie with the corner snipped off - I didn't feel a proper piping bad was necessary for this simple task - and piped a swirl of chocolate frosting into the flower center. I then went over the initial swirl with small dots of frosting until it was completely covered and, by George, looked an awful lot like a sunflower!

I made 4 sunflowers and it took the better part of an hour. I would love to make these again, so I think I'll be stalking the local Bulk Barn & cake supply shops' aisles pretty frequently until that petal cutter I want shows up.

Once all the flowers were done, it was time to apply them to the cupcakes.

For a how-to on making your cupcake flower pots, check out this post. When I was making a full dozen like this, I completed each step for all the cupcakes before moving on to the next step. Here you can see I'm partway through adding all the upper rims to the pots.

And voila! With a large flat leaf draped over the seam of the pot's upper lip and a sunflower nestled comfortably atop it, we have a successful sunflower-in-a-pot cupcake!

I have a feeling this may become a thing.

I'm on a real cupcake kick lately, and as I write this at 1:00 AM Sunday morning, I have a very experimental batch of cupcakes sitting in my good ol' cupcake caddy on the kitchen island. Tomorrow I'll be sharing them with my coworkers at my other job - oh, did I never mention I work a second job seasonally? No?

Well, I guess I'll talk more about that and the experimental cupcakes on Thursday.

Until then!