How to make a Cupcake Bouquet for a Wedding

I was asked recently to make some cupcakes for a wedding; they turned out really well, as you can see here. But I was thinking about a way to make the cupcakes stand out on the buffet table and remembered I had seen something called a 'cupcake bouquet' on the internet - a way of arranging cupcakes so they look like a bunch of flowers. So I decided to have a go!

I made a basic vanilla cupcake which was fluffy and delicious; the recipe is here.

To make the cupcake bouquet, you need a ball made of polystyrene or a florist's oasis, and a flower pot that it will sit in. I bought the polystyrene ball from Hobbycraft. The wedding colours were white and pale pink and I happened to find this flower pot in a 99p Store as part of a set of three. It was almost the right size so I stuffed some bubble wrap into the bottom of the pot and sat the polystyrene ball on top.

If you are using oasis you will need to wrap it in clingfilm to stop it shedding. I decided to wrap my polystyrene ball in green tissue paper as I knew there would be gaps between the cupcakes and decided this would look like foliage.

I piped buttercream roses onto the cupcakes; you can easily find YouTube tutorials of how to do this so I won't go into detail. This was my first time piping buttercream roses and they are far from perfect; I used a fairly small nozzle and would rather have had a bigger one.

I used three cocktail sticks to fix each cupcake onto the ball. Because the polystyrene was quite tough and I didn't want to push the cakes too hard, I stuck three cocktail sticks into the ball first, and then gently pushed the cupcake onto the three sticks. A trick that Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker gave me was to start with the cupcake on the top and then work downwards and on both sides, or the whole thing might tip over!

It wasn't difficult at all to fix the cupcakes onto the polystyrene ball. I also scrunched up some more pieces of green tissue paper and used half a cocktail stick to secure them, for added foliage.

Here's a view of the cupcake bouquet from the top:

And from the front

I also tied a pink ribbon around the flower pot.

I was pleased with how this turned out and how easy it was; I gave it to the groom and for a moment he thought it was a real bunch of flowers! The bride realised immediately what it was of course.

I thought it made a nice focal point on the buffet table and was a bit different; here you can see it next to the cupcakes I made.