Mini Buttercream Rose Bouquet Cupcakes

This week, I have been ‘painting the roses red’ (& white) with these divine miniature Victoria sponges cupcakes, with yummy raspberry centres and creamy vanilla buttercream. Deeeeelicious!

This week you’ll discover how easy it is to fill your cupcakes with scrumptious flavoured centres and learn several easy rose techniques to add to your repertoire but for now, a few tips on getting bright and beautifully coloured blooms.

Now as anyone who’s ever tried it will tell you, getting a true red and a true white buttercream can be a challenge, no matter how much of a dab hand you may be.

Just like colouring chocolate, the issue is with the fat content in the butter and the water-based colourant. (You don’t need to be a master baker to know that fat and water don’t mix easily!)

So, for this project, I reached for my handy utility belt and chose to bring out the big guns from the Sugarflair Extra Maximum Concentrate Range - Guarenteed to pack a punch when colouring... well,practically anything really!

Sugarflair Red Extra is my absolute ‘go to’ for any time I need something ‘red-red’ in the kitchen. Also perfect for red velvet cake, this super concentrated little pot contains some serious colouring power, meaning you’ll need far less colourant than even the best quality regular strength pro brands.

True white is also a lot harder than you might think to achieve as, after all, natural buttercream is essentially yellow! To lighten your butter, always ‘whip it ‘til it’s white, before adding your sugar (about 5 minutes vigorous beating on high speed should do the trick) but to get ‘white-white,’ you’ll need to go a little further.

Some add a minuscule amount of violet colourant to their buttercream to whiten it. And good luck to them! I personally have a 100% success record of turning my whole batch grey every time I try this! (Well, at least I’m consistent!)

For me, a bit of Sugarflair Extra White icing whitener is by far the easiest & most effective way of

getting my whites to shine like freshly driven snow, every time, without a hitch.

So now with our reds red and our whites white, all that’s left to be done is to put the kettle on & enjoy the tutorial.

Hope it inspires you make something beautiful!

With love, as always.

The Sugarcraft Contessa