Buttercream Flower Cupcakes

These are a few cupcakes I decorated using chocolate cupcakes from my signature chocolate cake recipe, and my signature buttercream icing in purple, pink, blue, and green. I just chose three simple flower designs, all of which I have done before. The pink and blue flowers I have done on cupcakes before, but they were miniature cupcakes, which seemed to work better because it required less petals and covered less space. They are featured in my March 1st, 2012 post of Flower Cupcakes, along with some buttercream roses. The purple flower I have only done on cakes before. These are featured in a few of my cakes, most recently on my mother's birthday cake on August 21st. They can look slightly different depending on exactly how you pipe them. All three designs seemed to work out fairly well on these large cupcakes. I filled in the centers of all of the flowers with some simple green icing, using either my open #3 round tip or my open star tip for the pink flower. The purple flower is a simple drop swirl flower using flower tip #150. The blue flower is simply swirls using an open star tip. The pink flower also uses flower tip #150, in an outward and upward motion, which is a bit difficult to describe. These are all simple flowers you can pipe directly onto cakes or cupcakes, which certainly comes in handy if you are not very good at piping buttercream roses or working with fondant or gum paste. These are also simpler, and often tastier than a slab of fondant or a mountain of buttercream.