Spring Flower Cupcakes

It has been a hard winter. You can say that again. Ok, so it has been a very testing and miserable winter. And unfortunately, spring hasn't even fully arrived yet. I still see snow on the ground, the sun has been much less prominent than needed, and I have yet to venture outside in shorts or a t-shirt. So I made some flower cupcakes. If we cannot have real flowers growing yet, at least we can enjoy some another way. I used bright spring colors - maybe this will help to welcome spring.

I used basic vanilla cupcakes as the base. Then I used a dollop of chocolate frosting for the center of each cupcake. Next, I made up a few different colors - yellow, lilac, and light blue. I used a basic open star tip to pipe six swirls as petals on each cupcake. 

Here is a neat trick, and also very convenient when you only have one piping bag and/or one tip on hand. It's not that it takes too much time to wash between changing colors, but the excess water on the piping bag often has an undesired effect on the icing. So when one color runs out, I just fill the bag with the next color. The first cupcake or two frosted after this will have streaks of each color, which I think is pretty and better reflects flowers in nature.