Bright and beautiful these cupcakes will stun your eyes and win over your hearts with their luscious blend of sweet and tart. Soft and fluffy vanilla cupcakes filled with a homemade raspberry coulis and then topped with a fresh lemon buttercream are by themselves a perfect bite. Then add on the addition of the buttercream flowers and they make the perfect edible bouquet!
These cupcakes are not only delicious but easy to make! Simple and fresh flavors are what make these beauties come to life. Then just a bit of technique and you can be on your way to wow your family and friends.
The cupcakes themselves are very simple and take about 15 minutes to prep before putting them in the oven.
BUT, I have an awesome trick for you!
Do you sometimes make cupcakes or muffins and the bottom of the liner is super greasy? This happens to me all the time! Here is trick:
Put a layer of uncooked rice in the bottom of the cupcake tin. Then put your liner on top of the rice. Fill your liner with batter, bake and boom. No greasy bottom. The rices absorbs all that grease.
I did a little experiment. I filled one tray with a thin layer of rice and left the other tray without anything.
Look at the difference!
Also when it comes to baking cupcakes, less is more. This is such a hard concept for me. I always want to fill my cupcake liners to the brim with batter. Don't. Only fill about 3/4 the way. I definitely overfilled a few and trust me it is not worth it.
One more tip, for these cupcakes make sure that you bake at a lower temperature: 325 F or 165 C. I did another little experiment to see what would happen if I baked them at 350F or 175 C.
My kids are at my amazing in-laws for the week and work is slow this time of the summer... so I thought why not take advantage of this time and try out a few new baking ideas.
The cupcake on the left was baked at the higher temperature. Why does this happen? When the oven is too hot the cupcake rises too quickly before the batter in the middle can fully bake. This makes the top part sink in after. Not very attractive. Let's stick to the lower temperature.
Once these cupcakes are fully cooled we can start to fill them with our raspberry coulis.
I've made coulis in the past and raspberry is by far my favorite. The flavor is so intense with only using a few ingredients and zero extracts:
Fresh raspberries
Sugar
Water
Lemon zest
Yep that's it! Put it all in a saucepan, bring to a simmer and let that go for about 15-20 minutes until the mixture reduces by about 1/3.
Then using a sieve, strain out the raspberry seeds leaving you with a concentrated raspberry mixture, otherwise known as a coulis.
Let the coulis cool to room temperature by first leaving it out on the counter and then placing it in the refrigerator to fully chill. Once it has fully chilled it will look like a spreadable jam.
Then you can fill your cupcakes. I like to use a Wilton 1A piping tip to 'dig' out the center of my cupcake.
Once you have filled your cupcakes you can start with the buttercream.
I like to use an American buttercream because it is the stiffest of all buttercreams and make it easier to pipe delicate and detailed designs.
If you are in Germany like me, I like to use this brand of butter. However I find that the different brands of powdered sugar are basically identical and do not make a difference. One brand is from the grocery store Penny and the other from Rewe.
Once your buttercream is ready to go, I like to separate it into different bowls so that I can add my coloring. I love using Wilton gel pastes but they really are pricey. Another brand that I found on Amazon are these. The colors come out beautifully and you only need a few drops.
To get multiple colors in one bag, take one color and spread it with a spoon all along the outsides of the bag. Then place your other color directly into the bag. You might need to do a few practice flowers until both colors come out at the same time.
Here I decided to try out my Russian piping tips. Russian piping tips are extra large piping tips that are supposed to make piping flowers very easy.
Practice makes perfect so make sure to make extra buttercream.
It does make piping flowers easy but not super easy. The consistency of your buttercream has to be just right. If it is too stiff then your buttercream won't adhere to the cupcake. If your buttercream is too soft then it will pipe out into a blob like you see on my cutting board. If necessary, put your buttercream into the refrigerator for 5-10 minutes to firm up. This did take me some time to get right but in the end I was very impressed with my summer floral arrangement.
I even gave a tutorial on how to make these cupcakes. I am so impressed with their work! They are beginners and used my recipe below with my tips of course.
I am one proud teacher over here.
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