Rose Cupcakes

So here's my Rose cupcakes.  They kind of look okay don't you think?  I'll post what they should have looked like below.

It was a disaster unfortunately.  I practised mixing frosting for a couple of hours, to make sure I could get the right consistency, using a classic buttercream recipe of just butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract.

I traced circles onto a sheet of grease proof paper, using my new favourite kitchen utensil, an ice-cream scoop. Inserted my nozzle (Ateca 2D) in the disposable piping bag and loaded it with the fluffy pale buttercream. Yes, very proud, to have acheived a nice fluffy buttercream with the help of an electric hand whisk.

Using the circles I tried to acheive what would look like roses.

This worked quite well, I know they don't look perfect but I was quite amazed to see they actually resembled roses :)

I practised for a while.  The good thing about this is that I could simply scrape off the buttercream from the sheet back into the piping bag and start again, and again. 

I do have lots of mantras in my head that keep me going and whenever I'm starting out on whatever new task, I'll say to myself "never compare your beginning to someone else's middle".  This phrase popped into my head because a professionally applied frosted rose should look like this...

www.createdby-diane.com

Yes, they look incredible don't they!  So smooth and perfectly piped.... how!?

I can see that this is going to be a journey that I will either give up in frustration or keep going until I can achieve perfection... I hope it's the latter.

The good thing is my cupcakes turned out really well!  I have to say Rose is a strange flavour. It kinda reminded of parma violets. A flavour you either dislike immensely or strangely like. Let's just say, it's not a flavour I would probably want to add to my new favourite food list. 

I figure I'm gonna have to be fairly organised when it comes to baking, I do suffer with "bodge it and scarper" syndrome, this is something I definitely want to avoid.  I have therefore measured everything first and have everything ready to go as I follow the recipe.



The cupcakes tasted very nice. They were quite moist which was nice and the rose flavouring was unexpected and I think, lovely.  I only have seven cupcakes though!  The recipe was for a dozen!  Or so I thought, oops, I overlooked the bit where it mentioned "Makes 24 Mini Cupcakes"! So, if I attempt this recipe again I will double up all the ingredients for 12 standard size cupcakes. 

I've posted this recipe in my Recipe Index and have listed the ingredients to make 12 cupcakes.

Things that went wrong...

I really enjoyed baking these cupcakes but the recipe for the buttercream included creme fraiche.  Unfortunately I couldn't achieve the right consistency I had achieved and practiced with earlier that afternoon.  And so it was looser.  I popped it in the fridge for a bit but this didn't really help.  

As I began to pipe I knew it wasn't working immediately. I made a frantic attempt to pipe each one, quite happy at this point that there were only seven cupcakes(!) and rushed the cupcakes to the plate, scrambled for my iphone and took the picture as quickly as possible.  So glad I made this decision as two minutes later, the frosting had sunk into the cake and no longer resembled a rose!

So, don't use creme fraiche I guess, unless you're experienced at frosting of course!

Thinking about it, I'm not sure why this recipe calls for creme fraiche or indeed why you would add creme fraiche to any frosting? I can only guess it was supposed to make it nice and creamy, which I thought it had at first, but it needed to stay firm, which sadly it didn't.

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