Pink rose cupcakes

My colleague, Linda, is having a bridal shower for her daughter today.  She asked me to make some cupcakes for the shower.  I had made some basic Vanilla Daisy Cupcakes for Pink Ribbon Day, and Linda liked those, but wanted me to tone down the colour to pastel pink.

I wanted my challenge on this one to be the decorating.  I normally couldn't be bothered putting much effort into decorating, but this time, I had a reason.  From this video, I learned how to make fondant roses without cutters.  What I loved about this technique is that the lady uses plastic to stop the icing from sticking instead of icing sugar or cornflour - which is so much less messy.  I didn't make as many petals as her (I am not that patient!), but I think the roses look pretty good: 

I used ready rolled fondant from the supermarket and coloured it baby pink with gel colour.

The next challenge was making the roses look as if they belonged on the cakes.  I made simple buttercream icing using the Crabapple Bakery recipe (online here - I only needed half for 24 cakes), and coloured most of it baby pink with liquid colouring, reserving a small amount which I coloured light green with gel colouring.  To ensure that the majority of tastes were catered for, I used vanilla extract to flavour the icing.  (Rose water would have been nice too, but some people find it "soapy".)

After icing the cakes and setting a rose atop each one, I piped on leaves using the green icing in a handmade paper bag with a V cut into the tip:  

So easy and so pretty!

Here is my rose garden:

I hope Linda and her daughter enjoy eating them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Happy Sunday!