Golden Butter Cupcakes with Almond Flowers

This is another one of those posts that I will use to focus on my decorating, rather than my baking. Using a picture I clipped out of a magazine a while back, I made a batch of cupcakes and decorated half to look like flowers, using sliced almonds. These were made for a Labor Day party.

I used a box mix for these cupcakes - Betty Crocker's Super Moist Golden Butter Cake Mix. I made 24 cupcakes using the box's directions, but I ended up only decorating 13 for the party. Once they had cooled, I began decorating.

For the plain ones, I used Duncan Hines' Frosting Creations. If you haven't seen these, they are very cool. They offer all types of flavors - bubblegum, cherry vanilla, mint chocolate, orange creme, and several others. I used chocolate almond. Thus, I had seven chocolate almond frosted cupcakes. Still six to go.

For these six, I frosted them with Duncan Hines' Cream Cheese frosting. Then I took two bags of sliced almonds and, by sticking them into the frosting in concentric circles, created flowers.

Aren't they pretty?

 

 

You may notice that, in the very middle, I have placed almonds with the skin still intact on one side. This creates a distinct center that helps the illusion of a flower. 

The whole batch.

 

 

These went over well, though I think some people were afraid to bite into the ones with almonds. They do look rather spiky! ;) They are more for accent than anything, really. I was happy with the way these turned out.