Cupcake Carnival: Cassie from Cakes by Cassie

Hi there! I'm Cassie from Cakes By Cassie. I'm so thrilled to be a part of Cupcake Week! I bake and decorate cakes, cookies, and cupcakes for a living. I also recently started teaching classes here in my hometown of Chandler, Arizona. I also love to craft, sew, scrapbook, and do fun things with my two beautiful little girls. I am very excited to share with you a fun and really easy project that YOU can do at home. Have you seen these? They are called cupcake bouquets. They're soooo cute!

Here's what you need:

12 to 15 mini cupcakes (or 20 if you can't stop eating them, like me)

Buttercream Icing - I will include my delicious recipe at the end of the post

Flower Pot or other container

Styrofoam ball

Dried Beans

Sprinkles or any other decoration - Michael's and JoAnn's have really cute ready-made flowers and royal icing decorations for you non-decorators out there!

Tissue Paper

and.....

Toothpicks (Sorry, toothpicks! I forgot you in the picture above!)

One important thing:

The styrofoam ball needs to fit real snug inside the flower pot or other container.

I iced my cupcakes and just sprinkled some sanding sugar over the top. This is something real simple that anyone can do. You can get fancy and decorate them with flowers or use a decorating tip to swirl your icing in a fun shape.

Important:

PUT YOUR CUPCAKES IN THE FREEZER. They must be very well chilled to assemble.

In the meantime...........

prepare your pot or container.

Weigh your container/pot down with dried beans.

Cover the styrofoam ball with tissue and stuff it tightly into the container.

I use 2 toothpicks per cupcake. So, starting on the bottom, put 2 toothpicks next to one another halfway into the styrofoam.

Stick your VERY WELL CHILLED cupcake onto the toothpicks.

Continue around the bottom and fill the entire styrofoam with your cupcakes. I realized that I wasn't going to have enough cupcakes to cover my styrofoam with the July 4th container, so I switched to a smaller pot and styrofoam. Woops! Sorry about that.

Add some ribbon around the outside. Or maybe rafia? Or paint the pots, or decoupage.... or something different!

This is one of my favorites. I had my 3 year old paint flowerpots and I assembled the bouquet in them.

I love the bright colors on these ones!

I'd love to see pictures of your bouquets! And check out my blog.... Cakes By Cassie. If you are in my area come join me for a class! I will have my online shop up and running soon. Look through my galleries for ideas. And try my buttercream recipe.... it's to die for!

Cassie's Yummy Buttercream

2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter

6 Tablespoons solid white vegetable shortening

about 1/4 cup milk

2 Tablespoons Mexican Vanilla

10 cups C&H Brand Powdered Sugar (or another brand, well sifted)

Cream butter and shortening. Add milk and vanilla. Slowly add powdered sugar. You may need to add more milk to thin the icing down, or more powdered sugar to stiffen it. It needs to be a good spreading consistency; amounts differ from region to region.

Store in refrigerator for up to one week. Let sit at room temperature to soften before using. Icing can also be frozen for up to 3 months.

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