Spring Flower Pot Cupcakes/Muffin
Aint this pretty??! What’s more, it is all edible! Chanced upon this idea in a Facebook post while surfing for ideas for my BB nephew’s first month celebration. The ingredients required for this spring flower pot are easily available and children are attracted to lollis like bees to honey isn’t it? Hence I decided to put my rusty skills to use for something that looks easy to make, is edible and yet can be used to decorate the place 😛
I adapted some of the ingredients from the site and instead of baking the mini muffins, I bought cupcakes as substitutes for the “pots” as I ran out of time and could not find mini muffins at the local bakery. Luckily, the proportions turned out fine and they looked pretty too though a little big. Haha..
Ingredients I bought/used were:
1) A bag of cupcakes/muffins from the local bakery (6 in the bag)
2) Oreo Cookies
3) A bag of Lollipops ( it was supposed to be mini lollipops but cos my muffin was bigger, I used the normal size ones)
4) Marshmallows
5) White Chocolate and Milk Chocolate
How to make it:
First, remove the cream from the Oreo cookies and then bash the oreo cookies in a bag till they look like soil. You can use a blender to blitz the cookies or you can squash them in a ziplock bag like I did if you do not want to make too much noise and have less washing up to do 😛
After all the crushing, your oreo will look like “soil” that you can plant your flowers in 😀
Next, cut up some marshmallows. I used the big marshmallows here, the same ones as you would buy when you want to barbeque marshmallows.
I started out using a knife to cut them and found it really messy. The edges of the marshmallows turned out very ugly as can be seen in the pic above (those framing the plate) and they cannot be used. It was also difficult to cut with a knife. Using a pair of scissors makes the task much easier. You just need to cut the marshmallows into 4-5 pieces and they will look like the shape of the petals immediately after you have cut them. If they don’t, just make minor adjustments with your fingers. You will need to snip off a bit on one side to form the base that will be used to stick to the lollipop.
Once the petals are ready, you can start to melt the chocolate. I popped the chocolates into the microwave for 20sec and they were all melty.
My White Couventure Chocolate – You will need some white chocolate to stick the marshmallows to the lollipops. Just a little bit will do.
The Hershey’s Chocolate bar that I bought (about 70g). This is used to stick the “soil”.
The ingredients needed to make the Spring Flower Pot
Coat your cupcake/muffin with chocolate
Next, dip it into a bowl of the crushed Oreo Cookies that was prepared. Ensure that it is well coated.
The nicely coated cupcake. Leave it to harden up a bit and your “pot and soil” is ready 😛
Next, we will need to make the flower. Dap a little white chocolate on the cut base of the marshmallow and stick it to the lolli starting from the point nearest to the stick.
Ta-da! My first successful edible flower! As I had my hands busy during the sticking process, there were no pictures to show the sticking process. In order to prevent the petals from dropping, I quickly stuck it into the pot and popped it into the refrigerator.
My first Spring Flower Pot taken with 2 different camera. I still think the iphone performed better. Some of the pictures in this post are taken with the Xiao Mi camera and I feel that the colour lacks the detail and colour. Can you guess which are the ones taken with Xiaomi? 😛
While waiting for the petals to “solidify”, I decided to work on the pots.
All the nicely coated muffin pots waiting to be planted with beautiful flowers.
It was a tough task getting the marshmallows to stick to the lollipop in the hot and humid weather in Singapore! I had to resort to opening my freezer and sticking the marshmallows to the lollipop there hoping that the chocolate will freeze and hold the marshmallow in place! It works for the first petal but as you add more, the magic seems to fade. Then I decided to pop the lolli into the freezer so that it will be cold and freeze the chocolate, holding the “petal” in place. But again, it would only work for one or two petals and then it fails again! Argh! I wasted quite a fair bit of marshmallows as they kept falling off or got too thick a coat of the white chocolate and look terrible. I wanted to give up and bring only one flower but the stubbornness in me made me persevered on.
And so, after 4-5 hours, I finally grew all 6 flowers! LOL.. You will need a delicate balance of freezing the lolli, temperature of the white chocolate, coating of the white chocolate on the marshmallow and swift fingers to stick them quickly and then popping it into the fridge to cool them and keeping your fingers crossed that they will not drop! If not, you will have a plot of withered flowers the next day! LOL… and oh, a lesson learnt is not to use the cola lollipop as it looks unappealing with its dark colour, looks like a “rotten” flower.hahaha… Strawberry or watermelon ones are good to use as the core of the flower.
Am really glad that the flowers held till the next day and that was how carefully I had to transport it to the venue.
Once there, it was re-potted to a grass turf (made of coloured sugar, all edible!) and left to shine! Yeah!
Another pic of the precious 6 flower pots displayed at one end of the buffet spread. The prettiest of the lot is still the first one that I made (bottom right). The ugliest would be the one with the 5 petals, made at the point when I wanted to give up! 😛 Due to the limited quantity, the guests thought that they were for display and did not dare to touch them! LOL. It was only until I told them that it is edible that the flowers and pots disappeared! 🙂
This is one ardous food craft completed in the hot and humid weather which I probably would not replicate. Only for you – my darling BB nephew!
For the list of ingredients and steps to make the Spring Flower Pot Mini Muffins, please refer to the site I got the idea from. 🙂
