TIPSY FLOWER TOWER

Celebrate your un-birthday with this tipsy cake. It’s so beautifully strange, you’ll feel like you stepped into Wonderland.

INGREDIENTS

2 cupcakes (paper liners removed)

1 mini cupcake (paper liner removed)

vanilla frosting

pink, purple, and green food coloring

sugar pearls

2 pieces pink taffy

1. Freeze your cupcakes for about an hour. Then cut the tops off the two large cupcakes on a slant.

2. Spread some frosting on the bottom of one cupcake. Place it on top of the other one. Arrange so that the slanted tops are opposite each other.

3. Spread frosting on the bottom of the mini cupcake, and stick it on top.

4. Push a wooden skewer down through the center of all three layers to hold them together. Then return the cupcakes to the freezer for another 15 to 30 minutes or until firm again.

5. Meanwhile, mix up a batch of pink frosting in a microwave safe bowl. Heat for about 15 seconds in the microwave. Stir. You want the frosting to be a liquid, pourable consistency. Heat another 15 seconds if it is still too thick.

6. Place the cupcake tower on a cooling rack with wax paper below. Spoon the melted frosting over all the cupcakes until they are well coated. When the excess frosting has all dripped off, transfer the tower to a plate. Put it in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes.

7. Mix up a batch of purple frosting. Pipe stripes on the middle cake. With the stripes still wet, place a sugar pearl at the top of each stripe.

8. Mix up a batch of green frosting. Pipe leaf designs on the top and bottom cakes. Add sugar pearls as accents.

9. Flatten one piece of taffy with a rolling pin. Cut it into about five small flower petal shapes. Roll one petal into a tube, and pinch one end closed. Attach the other petals to the pinched end and flair them out to make a rose. Repeat with the second piece of taffy.

10. Attach the roses on the tower with a dab of frosting.

Makes 1 flower tower