Rose Cupcakes with Crusting Buttercream

Rose Cupcakes with quick-crusting buttercream make a beautiful sweet treat for Valentines Day, birthdays or any day! You will want all my tips and tricks!

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Rose Cupcakes With Quick-Crusting Buttercream

Valentines Day is tomorrow!  There’s still time to make something cute and delicious!  I bet you may even have everything you need for these Valentine cupcakes in your pantry right now!

My oldest needed some birthday cupcakes to take to work the other day.  The birthday girl wanted vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting and to be honest, I was a little disappointed. lol  I thought it sounded a little boring until I remember I’ve never tried my hand at making rosettes on top of my cupcakes.

It’s unbelievably easy. 

How To Make Rose Cupcakes

First  I mixed up a batch of  Perfect Cupcakes using a mix  ‘recipe’ using a box of  Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe French Vanilla .  Now if you really want to go all out, you may want to give this White Wedding Cake recipe a try, but honestly, that doctored box mix recipe is AMAZING! I get compliments on my cakes and cupcakes every time I use it.

While the cupcakes are cooling whip up a batch of your favorite buttercream frosting.  This time I used a quick-crusting buttercream and LOVED it! (see the recipe for quick-crusting buttercream at end of this post)

What is Crusting Buttercream?

Shortening is the key ingredient to crusting buttercream because it doesn’t melt as quickly as an all butter frosting and provides a good texture. It will set up firm enough that it can be touched lightly without making a mark, perfect for making a rose cake, or rose cupcakes.

If you want a buttery flavor, you can use butter flavored shortening, or replace some of the shortening in the recipe with butter.  Just note the less shortening in the frosting, the less stable it will be.

What Do You Need To Decorate Rose Cupcakes? 

You will then need 16″ Disposable Icing bags and a 1M tip and gel food color (of choice).

Instructions

Make sure your cupcakes are completely cooled before decorating.

Place the frosting in the bag with the 1M tip. To make your rose, simply start at the center of your cupcake and move around the center in a circular motion.

Basically, it’s like making a spiral from the center out.  Most of the cupcakes I went around the center two times.

Garnish with sanding sugar or sprinkles if you want.

Tips & Tricks For Making Rose Cupcakes

• I learned from Bridget a long time ago, for perfectly red icing, use AmeriColor’s Super Red gel paste coloring.  Red is a hard color to work with, and the AmeriColor Super Red or Wilton Red (no taste) will yield a nice red without needing as much color, and give a funny “off” taste that you can get with other brands.

• If you want really white icing, be sure to use clear vanilla extract and add  Americolor  Bright White Soft Gel Paste to your icing. I was out of my white coloring when I made these, so you can see that my white icing looks a little off white.  But when you add white coloring, as I did to these snowman cupcakes, you can get that nice bright white icing.

• I frosted 8 cupcakes with my white frosting, then I added pink coloring to the buttercream and frosted 8 pink cupcakes, then finally added the Super Red color to the pink to get my red frosting.  It was way less mess and stress than trying to make all three colors before I started.

Share them with someone you love!

Rose cupcakes aren’t just for Valentine’s Day, they make a sweet surprise for Mother’s Day, a birthday, wedding, shower or any day.

Looking For More Valentine Treats

Triple Chocolate Cherry M&M Cookies |  Caramel Banana Raspberry Napoleons | Red Velvet Pancakes | Red Velvet Crepes | Strawberry & Chocolate Nachos | Valentine Butter Cookies with Butter Cream Frosting | Chocolate and Salted Caramel Cupcakes | Valentine Rose Cupcakes | Chocolate Cupcakes with Strawberry Whipped Cream Filling | Cherry Sweetheart  Cake | Chocolate Cut-out Valentine Cookies with Royal Icing

Are you ready for Valentine’s Day?  Do you do anything special?

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Quick Crusting Buttercream Frosting

Quick Crusting Buttercream Frosting is perfect for decorating cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. It holds up well in warm conditions, tastes incredible and pipes beautiful flowers and details. Also, it can be stored up to 2 weeks when needed.

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup water
• 3 Tablespoons meringue powder
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 5 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (use clear vanilla if you want a pure white icing)
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 3-4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream (approximately)
• gel food coloring (optional)

Instructions

1. Beat water and meringue powder until stiff peaks form.
2. Add shortening, sugar, and extracts and whip for 3 minutes.
3. Add milk or cream to thin
4. Store well covered.

Notes

Decorate cookies and leave to “dry” for 24 hours. You can then stack and store in air tight container.

(adapted from Karen’s Cakes)