Floral Pastel Feminine Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for a friend's surprise birthday party that was yesterday. I wanted to go for something cute and pastel. And I wanted to use both the new fondant cutter set and drying roll slider that I had got. And so I came up with these. Light and moist with a vanilla buttercream topping. Only when I was icing the last batch did it strike me to add more icing sugar and see how the texture would change. Adding more icing sugar made piping the buttercream a lot better, the shape held more strongly since the buttercream was stiffer.

Here's the recipe I adapted from Magnolia's Bakery and The Hummingbird Bakery:

Yields about 55 mini cupcakes or 24 regular sized cupcakes.

Vanilla Cupcakes
1 cup butter, softened
1 and a 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 and 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 and a 1/2 cups plain flour
1 cup milk
2tsp vanilla extract


Combine the flours in a bowl.
In a separate bowl, gradually add the sugar to the butter and beat until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat after each addition. Add a third of the flours to the butter mixture, beat well. Follow with a third of the milk and vanilla. Repeat until all flour and milk are incorporated. Spoon into paper cases and bake at a preheated oven of 180C.

Vanilla Buttercream
85g softened unsalted butter
350g icing sugar, sifted
30ml milk


Beat the icing sugar with the butter until fully incorporated. Gradually add the milk while beating at slow speed until mixture comes together and is of the right consistency. Once all the milk has been added, increase the speed to high and beat for a couple of minutes.

To decorate, color the icing whichever colour you like. I used Wilton's gel food colouring in sky blue, creamy peach, and ivory. Use any piping tip ( I used a small and medium sized star tip) and piped a border and kept going further in until I had a little pile of icing at the top.

For the fondant decorations, color some fondant in the color of your choice by applying a little gel colouring to the fondant with a toothpick. Keep kneading the dough until the color is even throughout. Roll out on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar and cut out shapes of your choice. If you'd like the shapes to be inverted, place them on a sloped or curved surface and allow to dry. Simply place the fondant decoration on top of the buttercream. To stick a smaller fondant decoration over a larger one (as in the picture above) use a little melted white chocolate or egg white.