Rose Cupcakes recipe

Back in February, for Valentine's Day, we went to a special couples-only dinner where daycare was provided. I was excited to go because I didn't think we could celebrate on the actual holiday because everyone else would be out, so this worked out great! In addition to going, we signed up to be part of a dessert judging contest.

For days I scoured internet recipes and finally found this one from FamilyFun.com. It looked simple enough so we bought all the ingredients we needed and set to work. My roses didn't turn out perfectly, but you could tell they were roses and that was good enough. They were fun to make so I wanted to post it on this week's recipe. Any changes/suggestions, I wrote off to the side. :)

Rose Cupcakes

12 mini cupcakes

White icing

Scissors (I used a small pizza cutter and a knife)

6 rolls of red Fruit Roll-Up

1 roll of Fruit by the Foot fruit leather in Color in Color by the Foot flavor (I couldn't find this so I used Betty Crocker's Fruit Roll-Ups Fruit Stackerz, the green ones, as leaves - they were perfect and I didn't have to cut them into shape!)

1. Frost 12 mini cupcakes with white icing.

2. To make a rose, unroll a piece of the cherry or strawberry fruit leather and divide it in half along the wavy perforated middle line. Take one of the halves and roll up about 5 inches to form the flower's center. Set the rolled strip wavy side up in the middle of a cupcake, as shown, and continue to loosely wrap the remaining fruit leather around the center at a slight angle until the flower is completed.

3. Repeat this process for the remaining flowers. You should be able to get 2 mini roses out of each roll of fruit leather. (I used one Fruit Roll-Up per rose so they were a little bigger)

4. Cut leaf shapes from the wavy edge of the Color by the Foot strip as shown, then tuck the leaves under the roses. (This is when I used the Stackerz)