Rose Water Cupcakes with Flour Frosting

These cupcakes were totally an experiment, from frosting to cake. I've never baked with rose water before and was super excited when I found some at a local kitchenware store. I didn't really know what to do with it, so I thought I'd stick with the basics before I branched out. Cupcakes, it was!


But instead of my usual SMB, I wanted to try a unique flour frosting recipe that I recently stumbled upon. The fact that it's made with a flour base instantly piqued my curiosity. I mean, flour in frosting? How weird was that?! I needed to taste it. Immediately.

Needless to say, I was super excited about the day of experimenting in my kitchen! New flavor, new frosting- new cupcake!

(1) The Rose Water Cupcakes

These cupcakes were really simple. Just use your favorite vanilla cupcake recipe and replace the vanilla extract with rose water. (Use whatever measurement the cake recipe calls for. You can probably even add a tiny splash of vanilla to it too, but I left it out because I didn't want it to mask the flavor of the rose water.) I personally like the Vanilla Cupcake recipe from Williams Sonoma. It's the same recipe I used for the Blueberry Lemon Filled Cupcakes.

(2) The Rose Water Flour Frosting

Ok, now on to the interesting part! I found this recipe on Obsessed with Baking.

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan, combine flour and sugar.

And add some milk. Don't worry if it produces flour clumps at first.

On medium heat, whisk constantly, making sure that it doesn't boil and that the clumps made by the milk has dissolved. After a few minutes, the mixture will thicken. Ready to go!


Transfer the mixture to a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on high for several minutes until it has cooled. (Took me maybe ten minutes.)


Once the mixture has cooled, slowly add in the butter until well incorporated. This is what it looked like after all the butter was mixed in. It was a bit soft, which concerned me. Can you tell that it's like... mushy? Reminded me of a cream cheese frosting that was too soft. But I pushed on anyway.


At this point, I added 1/2 teaspoon of rose water and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, along with some red gel food coloring. Then I mixed it again for about a minute.


Hm.. still too soft. The consistency was off. You wouldn't be able to pipe with it. The instructions said that if this happens, you should stick it in the fridge to cool down. Ok, so I did that. Then I checked on it 15 minutes later. Still too soft. Then 40 minutes later. No good. Finally, more than an hour later, it looked like it had stiffened a bit, so I tired piping on the swirls. (You know, my usual swirly-cupcake-frosting-thing.) The swirls turned out ugly! I wish I had taken photos to show you guys. The frosting just wasn't stiff enough to hold.


So I had to use my off-set spatula. Which didn't make me happy, because I had to squeeze all that frosting back out of my piping bag. And I had already done this once before, when I decided to use a different tip (because I don't use couplers for my jumbo tips). The frosting was WAY soft... to the point where it was difficult to smooth out with an off-set spatula. humph! You know how I like my cupcake swirls...


So without the swirls, I had to find other ways to spruce these babies up. Luckily, I recently purchased these pretty pink liners that seemed to match the frosting pretty well!


Then I topped them off with some cute white sprinkles. Not bad. I was happy about being able to salvage them. (You know how obsessive compulsive I am about creating aesthetically pleasing cupcakes. tee hee.)

Ok, so how did they turn out? FANTASTICALLY! They were so delicious! The rose scent in the cupcake/frosting was phenomenal! It was subtly fragrant without being overly "perfume-y." It tasted like how a rose smells...wonderful! The frosting was pretty awesome in its own right. (I couldn't detect the flour at all. You wouldn't even know that it was there.) It was creamy, rich, and just melted in your mouth, without being too over overpoweringly sweet. Even though I didn't like the texture when I was piping it on, it was love at first bite! har har. It was very smooth and creamy- could definitely hold its own against other buttercreams!

These cupcakes have definitely made it to the top of my list! It's right up there with (gasp, dare I say), the chocolate salted caramel cupcake! I think the rose water frosting would also go well with a chocolate cupcake too. Well, doesn't everything go well with chocolate?

I highly recommend getting your hands on some rose water! It sure was a great flavor experience. =)

Click HERE for the WS Vanilla Cupcake Recipe.

Click HERE for the Rose Water Flour Frosting Recipe.