Make Easy Rose Cupcakes

Valentine’s Day is this week, and one of the traditions my girls and I seem to be forming for VDay is making simple (but impressive looking!) rose cupcakes. I totally cheat and make cupcakes with a cake mix, and then we stir up some buttercream icing together and pipe it in a beautiful rose shape onto the top of our cupcakes.

It’s an easy process, but my girls love making them with me, and I love displaying them because they’re just so darn pretty!

All you need are cupcakes (use a mix like I do for a quick fix), some buttercream icing (I use this recipe), a large icing bag and coupler and a 1M icing tip from Wilton (an “open star” tip).

Once the cupcakes are cool, completely fill your piping bag with buttercream icing. (I tried to make a video of the process, but I couldn’t figure out how to move it from my tablet to my computer – argh! Hopefully I can illustrate it for you effectively.)

Starting in the center of the cupcake, squeeze a mound of icing onto the top of the cupcake, and then continue squeezing icing in a spiral pattern around the center mound until you reach the edges.

The 1M tip really does all of the work for you and creates a lovely rose petal effect!

This year, we baked our cupcakes in these fun paper cups we found at HomeSense. Last year, we topped our rose cupcakes with a jelly heart candy.

Of course, part of our rose cupcake tradition is to each eat one right after we’re done. Someone has to test these immediately, right?!

Do you and your kids have any Valentine’s Day traditions?