Hydrangea Cupcakes Recipe

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners. Brew your coffee.

In a large bowl combine your dry ingredients: 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, sift in 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 1 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp salt and whisk together until there are no more cocoa lumps.

In a separate bowl, mix together your wet ingredients: 1 cup coffee, 1 Tbsp vinegar, 2 tsp vanilla extract and 1/3 cup olive oil.

Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients just until they come together. Your batter will still be a little lumpy.

Use an ice cream scoop to pour your batter into the lined cupcake pan; They should be about 2/3 full. Bake 18-20 minutes on the center rack or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove the cupcakes to cool on a wire rack.

In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, mix the 1 stick of softened butter with 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar and salt on low speed or until combined, scraping as necessary ~ 1 min. Increase speed to medium-high and beat until the mixture is pale and fluffy (2-3 min).

Add cream cheese 1-piece at a time and mix until combined. Once all of the cream cheese is incorporated, continue to beat 1 more minute until fluffy, scraping down the bowl as necessary. You need your frosting to be super smooth without any globs of cream cheese or they will get stuck in the piping star, so if you see globs, keep mixing.

Separate frosting into as many bowls as you want different colors. I had ramekins for: white, pink, light blue, lavender and green. If you don't like food coloring or just don't have any, feel free to make beautiful pure white hydrangeas.

Start with placing a Wilton 2D tip (a large, drop flower decorating tip) into a piping bag. Place the prepared bag into a tall glass and fold the bag over the glass. Blend food coloring into the frosting to get your desired colors. For purple, I used 2 parts red and 1 part blue, for blue I used 3 parts blue and 1 part red to tone it down a little.

Add one color of frosting on the left side of the bag and a second color on the right side of the bag.

Pipe a little into a plate until you see both colors coming through. Start by piping the border of the cupcake and work your way in. Place the tip right over the cupcake, pull directly away from the cupcake about 1/3" and release creating a petal-like design. Work all the way around keeping the petals close together so you don't see the cupcake through the flowers. Your hands will cause the frosting to warm up as you pipe, so try not to handle it too much between cupcakes. If the petals start to soften and aren't holding their form, place the piping bag into the fridge to firm up for 5 minutes or so, then continue.