Rose cupcakes are a treat that combines beauty and flavor, making them perfect for any celebration. With their fluffy cake base and luscious pastel-swirled buttercream frosting, these cupcakes will delight your guests and brighten any table.
Create Stunning Rose Cupcakes for Any Occasion
Baking is not just about creating delicious treats but also about bringing beauty to the table. Today, I’m excited to share a recipe for beautiful cupcakes decorated to look like roses, complete with pastel frosting that complements a lovely floral table setting.
Creating the Perfect Cupcake Base
The foundation of any great cupcake is a moist and flavorful base. For this recipe, you will use a classic yellow cupcake. The light flavor and fluffy texture perfectly balance the sweet buttercream frosting.
Ingredients for Yellow Cupcakes
Yellow Cake Mix: Provides a convenient base, ensuring the cupcakes have a light, fluffy texture.
Buttermilk: Adds moisture, helping to create a tender crumb and enhancing the overall flavor.
Sour Cream: Adds richness and additional moisture, resulting in soft, decadent cupcakes that retain their freshness longer.
Eggs: Act as a binding agent and provide structure, stability, and richness. Also, gives the cupcakes a yellow color.
Vegetable Oil: Keeps the cupcakes moist and tender while ensuring a lighter texture than butter.
Vanilla Extract: Infuses the cupcakes with flavor, elevating the overall taste experience.
Steps for Rose Cupcakes
The steps for making the cupcakes are quick and easy. There is no need for a mixer.
Tips for Perfectly Baked Cupcakes
- Preheat your oven to the right temperature.
- Don’t overmix your batter.
- Keep an eye on the baking time to avoid overbaking and creating dry cupcakes.
Making the Buttercream Frosting for Rose Cupcakes
The star of the pastel rose cupcakes is the buttercream frosting! This fluffy base is easily tinted using gel food coloring to achieve beautiful blush, peach, and coral shades.
Ingredients for Buttercream Frosting
Butter: Provides richness and depth of flavor, creating a creamy texture essential to a smooth, luscious frosting.
Confectioners’ Sugar: Confectioners’ sugar (also known as powdered or icing sugar) sweetens the buttercream while ensuring a fine, smooth consistency that helps the frosting maintain its shape.
Vanilla Extract: Enhances the buttercream’s flavor, adding a warm note that enhances its sweetness.
Milk: Used to adjust the consistency of the buttercream, making it smoother and easier to pipe or spread while also adding a touch of creaminess.
Gel Food Colors: Used to create vibrant pastel shades without altering the texture.
How to Make A Rose Swirl for Rose Cupcakes
Use a large star tip to create a rose swirl on each cupcake. Here are the steps after you fill the piping bag with frosting:
- Place the tip in the center of a cupcake.
- Squeeze the piping bag to start the frosting flowing from the center. Keep the tip close to the cupcake.
- Continue squeezing and moving the tip clockwise, circling the cupcake until a rose forms. (Alternatively, you can circle counterclockwise if that is easier.)
- Terminate the flow of frosting by stopping the squeezing of the piping bag while pulling the tip downward and off the side of the cupcake.
This technique creates stunning roses that mimic the appearance of fresh cabbage roses. For optimal results, it is advisable to practice on waxed or parchment paper until you have mastered the technique. Moreover, practicing on paper will allow you to reuse the frosting by scooping it up and returning it to the mixing bowl. Additionally, this method will help you determine if the frosting is too stiff. If the frosting is too stiff, add more milk and beat until it reaches the desired consistency. Conversely, if the frosting becomes too thin, simply add more confectioners’ sugar.
Achieving Pastel Perfection for Rose Cupcakes
These cupcakes should be vibrant yet soft in color, perfectly capturing the essence of fresh pastel roses. To achieve this, use a mixer to thoroughly mix the color. Furthermore, there is no need to separate the colors into individual bowls; instead, you can combine and alter them directly in the mixing bowl for greater convenience.
Coloring the Frosting for Rose Cupcakes
Blush Pink
Start by adding one or two drops of pastel pink gel food coloring to your frosting. Mix well until you achieve a soft blush color. Frost 8 cupcakes with this blush pink frosting using a piping bag and a large star tip.
Peach
Next, empty the piping bag of the blush frosting back into the mixing bowl. Add a drop of yellow gel color to the bowl. Beat it until it turns peach. Aim for a subtle shade that remains light and airy. If necessary, add an extra yellow drop until you’re happy with the color. Refill the piping bag and frost another 8 cupcakes with this peach frosting. You do not have to change to another bag or clean this one because any remaining frosting in the bag will blend with the new color to create variances like real roses have. (See the photo below.)
Coral Pink
To create coral pink, add another drop or two of pastel pink gel food coloring to the remaining peach-colored frosting after squeezing out the leftover peach-colored frosting from the piping bag and returning it to the bowl. Beat the frosting until light coral. Frost the last 8 cupcakes with this color.
Other Recipes You Might Enjoy
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Rose Cupcakes
Equipment
- (2) 12-count muffin pans
- 24 yellow or white cupcake liners
- 1 large star tip (Wilton #1M or similar)
- 1 large piping bag
Ingredients
Vanilla Cupcakes
- ⅔ cup sour cream, room temperature
- 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature, and shaken
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- 1 box yellow cake mix (Duncan Hines recommended)
Vanilla Buttercream
- 1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks)
- 1 tablespoon clear vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon clear butter flavoring
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 3-4 tablespoons whole milk or cream
- 5 ½ cups confectioners' sugar (see note below on measuring sugar)
- pink gel food coloring (see note below on food coloring)
- yellow gel food coloring
Instructions
Vanilla Cupcakes
- Preheat the oven to 325°F. Place the cupcake liners into the muffin pans.
- Place the sour cream, buttermilk, vanilla, eggs, and vegetable oil into a large mixing bowl. Whisk until smooth. Then sift in the cake mix and stir until smooth — do not overmix. Do not skip sifting the cake mix because the batter will be lumpy.
- Using a cookie scoop, divide the cake batter between 24 cupcake liners.
- Bake for 15 minutes or until the cupcakes are lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean or with a few small crumbs. Be careful not to overbake. After 5 minutes of cooling time, move the cupcakes to a cooling rack. Cool completely before frosting.
Vanilla Buttercream
- Beat the butter, vanilla, butter flavoring, and salt with a mixer until creamy. Add the cream and stir. Add the powdered sugar a cup at a time, beating between each addition. If the frosting is too stiff, add more cream. If too soft, add more sugar.
- Add 1-2 drops of pink gel coloring to the frosting and beat to create a blush pink color. Cut off the tip of the piping bag and insert the star tip inside. Pull it through the hole so it becomes "seated" in the hole. Be careful not to cut off too much of the bag tip. The hole should be smaller than the star tip so it does not slip through.
- Add frosting to fill the bag, then squeeze a little back into the bowl to release any air. Pipe roses onto 8 cupcakes. Then, squeeze any frosting back into the frosting bowl.
- Add 1 drop of yellow gel coloring to the bowl and beat to create a peach-colored frosting. Add an extra drop if needed to achieve your desired shade. Be careful because yellow can go from not enough to too much quickly. Pipe 8 more cupcakes with the peach-colored frosting.
- Squeeze the peach-colored frosting back into the frosting bowl. Add a drop or 2 of pink gel coloring and beat to create a coral color. You may need to add another yellow drop to reach the desired color. Fill the piping bag with this color, then pipe the last 8 cupcakes with coral roses.
Notes
Measuring Powdered (Icing) Sugar
Use these tips to prevent adding too much sugar to the frosting:- Use a spoon to fluff the sugar before measuring it.
- Do not pack the sugar in the measuring cup.
- Use a knife to level the top of the sugar in the measuring cup.