We celebrated four birthdays this weekend, my son and daughter and my two nephews. ( They all fall in the month of August, and one of my nephews is here visiting from Australia. ) This year instead of making a cake I decided to do cupcakes and arrange them as a bouquet in a basket. 

The pink ones are the all occasion downey yellow butter cake with white chocolate mousseline buttercream.

The chocolate ones are the deep chocolate passion cake with chocolate neoclassic buttercream.

The white ones are carrot cake with dreamy creamy white chocolate cream cheese icing.

Everyone loved them.  For all the cupcakes I just used the recipe used for the cakes and just divided them into muffin tins and adjusted the baking times,  which made for a lot of cupcakes.  But everyone wanted to take extra ones home with them, so I only have about 6 left.  ( I think I had a total of about 72 cupcakes )  Obviously I couldn’t fit all of them in the basket,  so all the extras were left in the fridge.  When I ran out of room temperature ones, they didn’t care that the other ones were cold and that the buttercream was hard.  They mowed them down too.    Rose’s recipes are that good.

That is so beautiful and so cute!
Seriously cute, Liza!
You did such a nice job—they look just like a basket of flowers—so natural!!

Yummy flavors.

I love Rose’s cakes and frostings cold from the fridge even better than room temp, so I’d be pitching in on the cold ones myself!!!!

A bouquet of cupcakes, so cute.  The piping is so perfect also.  I think the Deep Passion Cake is fabulous for cupcakes!!

Oh, Liza, they are so cute and I just love the idea of putting them in the basket!  How did you anchor them in there?  You managed to get a perfect pink in the white chocolate mousseline.  Glad to hear everyone like them so much.

It’s beautiful and a ver creative idea. I bet you can you use that for many gift occasions. I know I would rather receive that than flowers.

Beautiful! Very creative Lisa. I think it looks absolutely gorgeous and cute! Like Julie I’m also interested in how you anchor it. Also, what did you put inside the basket?

Liza, I might borrow your idea someday, I hope you don’t mind?

Thank-you everyone.

I used the wilton cookie sticks with a little buttercream icing at the end of them and pushed that into the bottom of the cupcake about halfway up.  ( I had to make a small hole in the bottom of the cupcakes first to get the sticks in )  I used floral styrofoam and filled the inside of the basket with it and covered that over with moss and ivy that I bought at michael’s craft store and then pushed the other end of the cookie sticks into that.  It was very easy to do.

Jenn, I certainly don’t mind you using this as I got the idea from a website online.  So it certainly isn’t an original idea from me.  But it does make quite an impression.  And it is just something different to do with cupcakes.

I know I would rather receive that than flowers.

Ditto!!!! And I love flowers!

Absolutely beautiful.  I bow to your superior piping skills!

oh my goodness. what a great idea! so beautiful

Beautiful arrangement of amazing cupcakes.  I think I’ll use your idea for teacher gifts!

I think that would make awesome teacher gifts.  Who could resist a basket of cupcakes.