Lemon Cupcakes with Buttercream Flowers

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I am so Spring focused right now! Flowers blooming from the ground and on the trees, nice weather, birds singing.

So, of course I want blooming flowers on my cupcakes too!

These Lemon Cupcakes with Buttercream flowers beautifully represent Spring.

If you prefer a scratch cake batter to make the cupcakes, you can use my vanilla cupcake recipe. Just use fresh lemon juice in place of the vanilla extract.

For this recipe, I used a lemon cake mix for the cupcakes because I wanted to demonstrate how I use substitutions in a box mix. This video can be found in my Instagram Highlights on Tuesday Tips.

For the flowers, I used piping tip 104 for the petals and tip 89 for the leaves. I also used just the piping bags and cut off the tip off of three bags without actually using a piping tip. One bag is filled with white buttercream and has a hole slightly larger than the other 2. One of the smaller hole bags will have white and the second green buttercream.

Start with making the buttercream and dividing it into 4 bowls. I left one white, then tinted the others pink, light pink and leaf green.

Also cut 2 inch squares of wax paper that you will be piping the flowers on.

Use the piping bag with the larger hole to pipe about 1/2 inch of buttercream on a flower nail that’s covered a wax square held on by a dot of buttercream.

Place tip 104 in a piping bag. Add the pink frosting. Pipe out each petal in an arch letting them overlap each other until you have a flower. Repeat with remaining pink frosting and with the light pink and white frosting. I have a video demonstrating the piping on my Instagram Highlights as well under Buttercream Flowers.

Place each wax square with a flower on a baking sheet. Refrigerate overnight. This makes it easy to place the flowers on the cupcakes with their shapes in tact.

To assemble, use the piping bag with the white buttercream and a large hole to pipe about an inch of buttercream in the center of the cupcake. Peel a flower of each color off of the wax square and arrange it around the buttercream in the middle of the cupcake.

Place the leaf tip, 89, in a piping bag. Fill it with some of the green frosting. Pipe a few leaves at the bottom of the flowers closest to the top of the cupcake.

Fill a piping bag without a tip with more green frosting. Cut a small hole. Pipe dots of green frosting around the flowers covering where the flowers meet each other. Use the white buttercream filled piping bag with the smaller hole to piper white dots on top of the green dots. These should be slightly smaller.

And that’s it. This whole tutorial is on my Instagram Highlights.

Recipe:

Makes 24 cupcakes

Cupcakes:

1 box lemon cake mix

3 eggs

1/3 cup oil

1/2 cup buttermilk

3/4 cup milk

1 box vanilla instant pudding

1 tsp vanilla extract

Buttercream:

2 cups butter, softened

7-8 cups powdered sugar

6 tbsp milk

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

Buttercream:

Cream butter with a mixer. Add sugar, salt, vanilla, lemon juice and milk. Mix.

Reserve about 1 1/2 cups in a sealed container and place in the refrigerator.

Divide the rest into 4 bowls. Leave one white and tint te other 3 pink, light pink and leaf green. Pipe out flowers and place them on a baking sheet overnight.

Cupcakes:

Made the next day. Pre-heat oven to 350. Line cupcake pans with cupcakes liners to make 14 cupcakes.

I’m a standing mixer, mix eggs and oil. Add cake mix. Mix in milk, buttermilk, vanilla and pudding. Use an ice cream scoop to divide the batter between 24 liners. Only fill each one 2/3 of the way up. You have have extra batter at the end for additional cupcakes. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool completely.

Follow instructions for decorating cupcakes with the buttercream flowers.