Hydrangeas Hydrangeas Hydrangeas

A couple of months ago, I was going to attend a cook-out at my mom's house. My brother, his family, and my 2 aunts and uncles were going to be there, so I decided to not show up empty handed (I hate to say it, but if it just would have been dinner with my mother, I wouldn't have brought anything). I had some cupcakes in freezer and some white icing in the refrigerator and I wanted to bring something that looked impressive but was easy to make. I'd seen several pictures of cupcakes and cakes that looked like hydrangeas, so I watched a tutorial on YouTube. Yep ... easy but impressive looking.

Several tips can be used, but the easiest technique that I came across used a 1M tip. I tinted some of the icing blue and some of it a purplish color, put both colors in the bag together, and got to work on my cupcakes. I thought they turned out pretty good. I tried filling them with the icing as well ... but I think the cupcakes were still a little frozen inside because when my family bit into them, there wasn't much filling. Oh well. My uncle gave me a lesson on why the hydrangea had 2 different colors. Apparently, I fertilized my cupcakes a certain way to cause them to bloom with the 2 different colors. I was pretty sure that I had just mixed several different gel colors in the icing ... but I've been known to be wrong before.

A friend of mine wanted some cupcakes for her co-worker's 50th birthday. The co-worker likes pink and purple. So ... I made pink and purple hydrangea cupcakes. I didn't even try to fill them this time. These were white almond cupcakes with vanilla buttercream. I thought they turned out nice.

Today, I once again created hydrangea cupcakes. This time I made purple and gold. A woman I know works at a university whose colors are purple and gold. She's been home for 3 weeks recovering from surgery, and wanted to treat her co-workers with cupcakes. So I mixed some purple icing and some golden yellow icing, put it all in a bag together, but this time I used my new 2D tip. I actually like how the petals turned out with this tip better. I even filled these cupcakes ... and it worked this time. I filled the chocolate cupcakes with yellow icing and the vanilla cupcakes with purple icing.

As we head into Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, maybe I'll be done with hydrangeas for a while ... maybe I should learn how to make a poinsettia.

By the way ... this is what a real hydrangea looks like ...