Cake Decorating Just Got Easier With This Simple Hack

Cake decorating can be intimidating. Everyone has seen the adorable cupcakes topped with rainbow frosting, intricate flowers, or even small marzipan sculptures. Many of these edible works of art take hours to create (not counting the months or years of practicing your cake decorating skills.) If that’s where your passion lays then by all means keep on keeping on, but what if I told you that you can easily create adorable cupcakes topped with orchid flowers or daisies in mere minutes?

If you need to make cupcakes like NOW you can easily use your favorite box cake mix and store brought frosting to simplify this even further. By making a few cuts into store bough marshmallows you can great beautiful orchids and daisies to top your cupcakes.

You will need:

cupcakes and frosting (recipe at the bottom of this post if you want to make your own from scratch)

large marshmallows

colored sugar sprinkles (optional but they add color to the flower petals)

corn starch (for dusting your fingers)

Kelsey Kinser
  1. Take the marshmallow and flatten it gently in your fingers, elongating it. Using kitchen scissors make 4 cuts up the side but not all the way through! You want the marshmallow to remain in tact.
  2. Dip your fingers in corn starch to prevent the marshmallows from sticking to you. Fan out the cuts, creating petals. Loop the marshmallow back in on itself and seal it in a ring.
  3. Dip the cut sides into the colored sugar.
  4. Cut the bottom off of another marshmallow and flatten it and roll it up like a scroll. Cut that scroll in half and place in the center of the flower to create an orchid. Skip this step to make a daisy.
Kelsey Kinser
Kelsey Kinser
Kelsey Kinser
Kelsey Kinser
Kelsey Kinser
Kelsey Kinser

 

Kelsey Kinser

If you are making your own cupcakes and frosting try my favorite recipes:

Inspired by BakerBettie:

White cake cupcakes

2 1/2 cups cake flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 3/4 cups sugar, divided

1/2 teaspoon salt

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 cup milk, room temperature

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

6 large egg whites, at room temperature

For the Frosting try our super easy two ingredient white chocolate frosting!

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 muffin tins with cupcake liners.
  2. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, and salt. In a medium bowl whisk together the butter, milk, oil, vanilla, and three of the egg whites.
  3. Add the butter mix to the flour mix and stir together until just combined.
  4. In a bowl with a hand mixer or in your stand mixer whip the remaining egg whites and sugar on medium speed until peaks begin to form. Turn the speed up to high and continue to whip until stiff peaks form.
  5. Gently fold half of this meringue mixture into the batter. Fold the remaining half gently in, taking care not to deflate the batter.
  6. Fill each lined cup 3/4 of the way full and bake for 18-20 or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before frosting.