Busy Bee Cupcakes

busy bees

    Today I thought I would decorate some vanilla cupcakes with some busy bees. To make the bees I rolled out a small amount of yellow fondant into the body. Next I used a heart cutter to cut out white fondant for the wings – I cut each heart in half. Then I used black gel icing to draw 3 stripes on each bee and used this to attach the wings. For the eyes, I rolled out small discs of white icing and used edible glue to attach them to the bee. Finally I used the black icing for the finishing touch to the eyes. For the beehive, I made simple vanilla buttercream which I coloured yellow, and using a piping bag with no nozzle, I piped tall spirals on the top of the cakes. Then I placed the bees on the side of the hive and added a purple flower to the top to decorate.

The Cute Cupcakes

Butterfly Kisses Cake

The 225 flowers next to a 10p coin

   Today I was at Clare’s for the last time and we were planning to make a 2 tiered birthday cake which I’d seen in a magazine. Clare helped me to level, fill and ice the 2 cakes whilst I got on with making the 225 flowers to cover the cake. 

The flowers with piped centres

   This took a long time and I also made some leaves and 15 different butterflies to use on the cake. To prepare the cake for decoration I put 6 pins, evenly spaced, around the edge of both tiers before draping a necklace over the pins to create a gentle curve for the flowers to follow. I then pricked the icing with a pin, following this curve.

The draped flower garlands

   Then I took the cake home where I prepared some Royal icing using 100g of royal icing sugar and 16ml of water. I put this into a piping bag with a size 2 nozzle before sticking the flowers to the cake. Then I piped dots into the centre of each flower before scattering leaves near the flowers.

The butterflies with their antennae

   Next I made prepared the butterflies by halving stamens for antennae’s and I attached these by royal icing. I finally put these onto the cake. However I wanted to decorate the top of the cakes so I attached a decorated butterfly to the cake and I put a small spray of flowers at the bottom of the butterfly.

The completed Butterfly Kisses Cake

Pink Butterfly Cupcakes

   I made some cherry cupcakes and added some red food colouring to make the cupcakes pink. I cooked the cakes at 180^oC for 20 minutes and left them on a wire rack to cool. Then I cut off the top of the cakes and put them to one side before coring the cakes and spooning Black Cherry jam into the centre. Then I put pink buttercream on the top before halving the cake tops to make butterfly buns. To finish, I put a sprinkling of glitter on top.

Black Cherry Jam

The sparkly cupcakes