Sunflower Cupcakes

Earlier this year our daughter arrived home from school with a very thoughtful Father's Day gift, a sunflower plant! She was very proud of her achievement, all this was accompanied by a beautiful handmade card. There was great excitement when the tiny green sapling appeared above the soil and now a few weeks later it is a towering 20cms! It's progress has been very closely monitored and today it was deemed mature enough to be planted outside, so because it is no longer on the window sill for all to enjoy, we decided that a replacement was needed, of the sweet kind of course!!

I whipped up a batch of Basic Cupcake Recipe  which I added 1 tbsp of cocoa powder (for the soil) and yellow buttercream.

Makes 8-10

Ingredients
Basic Cupcake Recipe
150g Royal Icing
Green food colouring
10 Oreo Cookies (I used a 154g Packet of Chocolate Creme Oreos)

Method
Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before decorating. Sift the royal icing into a small bowl, add 2-3 drops of green food colouring, until a dark shade of green, add a DROP of water at a time until the icing is a very stiff consistency.

I made my icing a little too runny, if you need to stiffen the icing up a little then add some more royal icing or icing sugar

Snip a V into the icing bag with a sharp scissors and ice the leaves, repeat with yellow buttercream icing bag.

Ice the green leaves around the outer edge, place the Oreo in the centre of the cupcake, repeat with the yellow buttercream.  (Note my runny Royal icing, a stiffer icing will stand up much better!!)

This is not about prefection but about enjoying the process and enjoying the end result with a large glass of milk!!

Sarah's father day's gift with it's cupcake pals.