Mother's Day Cupcake Bouquet

I was woken early by roadworks. And as I'm likely to do when I have some spare time on my hands, I baked. I have lost many hours of precious sleep to the roadworks happening outside my door and it makes me very cranky so something soothing like baking gives me the balance I need. I noticed that they parked this enormous contraption during the day (a road ripper outer-er?) alongside my building to use it at night when the road is less busy. If I lose precious more sleep, I may have to consider listing the enormous thing on ebay-"to be picked up between the hours of 9-4pm only". That'll teach them to wake me!

Anyway, on to more important matters: cupcakes. I have an issue with florists around Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, the flowers seem to die a lot quicker when you buy them on either of those days as I think they must buy them a day or two earlier than they normally would to ensure that they get enough stock for patrons. So I prefer to save my pennies and buy flowers before or after those days. It annoys me when they only last 3 days and you've paid a premium for them.

Anyway I'm babbling off topic again, back to cupcakes. The foam and skewers are easy to do-all I used was the base from an Edible Blooms bouquet I received although the instructions are pretty simple to use a foam ball and skewers. I couldn't find any hyacinths to stick between the cupcakes as it is approaching Mother's Day and carnations and roses seem to have take over so I had to make do without.

I wasn't able to get any orange rind so I used glace peaches. Cutting the sticky fruit up and placing it was actually the thing that took the longest so do put time aside for that if you're in a hurry. The cake mix is a cinch and I found it made me exactly 24 of the tiny mini cupcakes that cooked in 10 minutes without a drop of cake mix to spare.

Orange peach cake

• 3-4 whole glace peaches

• 75 butter softened

• 1 teaspoon finely grated rind

• 1/3 cup (75g) caster sugar

• 1 egg

• 2 tablespoons self raising flour

• 1/2 cup plain flour

• 3 tablespoons yogurt or sour cream

Decorations

• 15cm polystyrene ball

• 24 skewers or double ended toothpicks

• 2 sheets tissue paper

• ribbon

• fresh flowers

• florist tape

• 2 x 12 mini cupcake baking trays lined with 24 mini cupcake liners

Step 1 - Cut each peach in half horizontally and then each half into small, thin strips-you will need to place 5 petals and 1 small piece as a centre for each flower so you'll want at least 120 petals and 24 centres so it will take a while. Try not to cut them too thick.

Step 2 - Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan forced.

Step 3 - Beat butter, rind, sugar and egg in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy.

Step 4 - Stir in sifted flours and then yogurt or sour cream. Divide mixture among cases; smooth surface. Top each cake with 5 petals and a small centre piece.

_After being baked, the cake has risen and because it's on 160c it didn't brown

_

Step 5 - Bake for 10 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Step 6 - Using a serrated knife, cut about a quarter of the ball away, so that ball will sit flat. Using toothpicks or skewers, secure cakes to ball. Place bouquet on small stand, wrap with paper and ribbon. Blind ends of fresh flowers with florist tape, position flowers between cakes