Wedding shower tea party: Flower cupcakes

Yet another Pinterest recipe.

The inspiration photo

Actually, it was just a photo - no recipe attached to it, but I thought it was perfect for a party where we were giving out potted flowers as party favors.

I asked Emily what kind of cupcakes she would like and she thought chocolate zucchini would be fitting. We used this recipe from my Aunt Bettsy:



CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI CAKE

1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup cooking oil
1 3/4 cup sugar

Cream these together.  Add:

2 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups grated zucchini
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sour milk
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
4 Tbsp baking cocoa
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour

Fill muffin cups, lined with paper liners, about 2/3 full.

Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

The frosting recipe came from good ol' Betty Crocker:

CHOCOLATE BUTTERCREAM FROSTING

3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup stick margarine or butter, softened
2 tsp vanilla
3 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled
2-3 Tbsp milk

Mix all ingredients except milk in bowl.  Stir in milk until smooth and spreadable.

The hardest part of the project was finding green candy for the flower's leaves. We ended up buying just about every kind of green candy we could find. I think what worked best though, was Apple O's, cut into quarters.

For the flowers, we did a mixture of lollipops (I wanted Dum-Dums, but could only find Blow-Pops) and salt water taffy inserted on a lollipop stick.