I love wandering through the craftstore aisles this time of year.  Up here in Minnesota, winters can seem to drag on forever but after Valentine’s Day all the spring craft items come out and they seem to put a spring back in one’s step!

The other day during one of my craft aisle wanderings, I came across these floral-shaped baking cups…

I fell in love with all the ruffles…

I thought these would work great for a cupcake bouquet, along with a few artificial flowers tucked in here and there…

 Wouldn’t this bouquet be perfect for Easter as the centerpiece for a brunch table? Or maybe as a gift for mom on Mother’s Day or well, any other special occasion where sweets and flowers go hand in hand?…  

To get started, you will first need to find a container and with all the Easter baskets in the stores right now, it shouldn’t be too hard to find something cute, pastel and perfect …

I found this one with little pink embroidered flowers. Soooo cute….

 
Next, prepare the container…

Cut green floral foam so that it fits snugly inside. You can hot glue it to the inside of the container, if you wish, so that it doesn’t shift on you while assembling the bouquet…

Then, prepare the cake batter (from the recipe of your choice) for the cupcakes…

Then, if you look at the baking cups, you will notice a sort of “line” on the inside…

Pour the batter into the cups up to this line…

Place the baking cups on a cookie sheet and bake according to your recipe’s directions and then let them cool completely.

While the cupcakes are cooling down, prepare the skewers. Take large gumdrops…

 (You can usually find these in a drugstore in the candy aisle) and slide them down about 1 inch from the skewer’s tip…

Take a piece of cardboard and cut out circles slightly smaller than the diameter of the bottom of the baking cups. Poke a hole through the centers of the cardboard discs…

Slide them over the tip of the skewers so that they rest on the surface of the gumdrops…

When the cupcakes have completely cooled, take a small stick pin and pierce the bottom of the baking cups in the center to make a small hole. Remove the pin.

** Be sure that your cupcakes have thoroughly cooled. The baking cups will be much firmer and easier to work with when the cupcakes are cold…

Take one of the prepared skewers and stick it into the baking cup’s bottom, into the hole you made with the pin…

Take a decorator’s bag fitted with a star tip and begin piping on little stars to create a center for your cupcake flower…

Then sprinkle yellow nonpareils over the top…

Stick the completed cupcake flowers into a brick of green floral foam until you are ready to assemble your bouquet.

Add the first cupcake flower to the container and trim it to its desired length using a sharp wire cutter. Add the filler of your choice. ( I used silk flowers and a little sheer green cloth ribbon as my filler…)

Keep alternating adding cupcake flowers and filler until your bouquet is finished!

***********

A couple of months ago, I found these cute little garden-themed stickers at the craft store…

 I knew they would come in handy someday and yeah, today was the day!

I took a small white gumdrop and trimmed it down with a scissors. I slid it onto the tip of a skewer…

And then peeled off one of those cute little dragonfly stickers and stuck it onto the gumdrop!…

When inserted next to the cupcake flowers, he appeared to be hovering over the bouquet! Cute!…

My passion is turning sweets into arrangements that appear like real floral bouquets. If you would like to see more ideas for floral-themed edible bouquets, check out my other site at Floralcookiebouquets.com  where I feature floral cookie E-tutorials.

Right now Floralcookiebouquets.com is  all about spring floral cookie bouquets! (Please click on the highlighted words for more information…)

Daffodil cookies…

Prim rose cookies…

Peony cookies…

and many other floral cookies! You can check them out at Floralcookiebouquets.com

 See you there!