To celebrate a friend’s birthday last weekend, I made a batch of Spring-inspired cupcakes.  Taking cues from a beautiful red and yellow hydrangea flower I had seen, I wanted to have the yellow come through as highlights within the red icing.  Click below to continue on!

Materials Needed:

• Cupcakes – cooled and ready to be frosted
• Buttercream Frosting
• Red and Yellow Gel Icing Colors
• Pastry Bag and cross-sectional Icing tip (I like to use the #77 Icing tip for a simple cross pattern or the #30 Icing tip for a star; the birthday cupcakes [image 1, 2, 5] were made with #77, while images 3 and 4 were with #30)

Directions:

1. Make your frosting, divide it into two bowls.  Add yellow coloring into one of the bowls, and red into the other.

2. Insert your icing tip into a pastry bag and add the red frosting. Squeeze against the sides to evenly distribute the red frosting within the bag.

3. Add your yellow icing into the center of the bag.  Don’t worry if it looks like the colors are mixing, that will happen. Once the yellow frosting has been added, twist your pastry bag to close.

4. First practice with the icing on a plate or flat surface. You’ll see that the pattern will take a few to start to showing the yellow highlights.  Once your yellow is coming through, move onto your cupcake, working in a circular pattern. Start at the edge and move inward to ensure you’re evenly working towards the center, as shown below.

[Note: Because it took me a bit longer to do this while I was photographing it – and because I was working in a lightbox, the icing was not as chill as it should be. Because of this, you’ll notice the below looks a little bit runny.  But if you look at the picture below the gif, you can see how much cleaner they look when I’m not worrying about capturing every step. It ain’t easy being a 1-woman team!] 

How cute do the red and red with yellow cupcakes look with some simple cupcake toppers?!  Since I didn’t want to overpower the details in the frosting, I kept the cupcake topper simple. I designed these personalized toppers on my computer and then printed them onto photo paper to get a semi-glossy finish. They looked beautiful on dessert table!