These DIY autumn floral cupcakes are easy to make when you make the flowers ahead of time using air-dry buttercream. This kind of piped flower will get stiff enough to handle gently and move around, but won’t dry hard like royal icing does.
These cupcake decorations are good for beginners because you can make them ahead of time and take your time with them. When you’re ready to make your fall-theme cupcakes, just place them on top and you’re done.
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Recipe for air-dry buttercream.
The recipe for air dry buttercream is basically:
- 1 pound confectioner’s sugar
- 1 cup vegetable shortening like Crisco
- and about 1/4 cup water.
Beat the shortening in a mixer, then alternate adding the sugar and the water. You might need more or less water depending on how thick you want the icing, and how humid it is at the time.
The idea with air dry buttercream is that you want it to be able to sit out and crust over then dry out without needing refrigeration. To accomplish that, you need a crusting buttercream with confectioner’s sugar, but you don’t want any dairy in it.
Once you have the icing ready, color it with the colors that you want to, and get ready to do the piping.
For these pretty fall cupcakes I used the Americolor Student Set #2 colors, which are all autumn tones. You can click here to see the set on Amazon (#ad)
Get the piping supplies together.
Get your supplies together…You’ll need these things. (All links go to Amazon and will pay a commission if they’re used to purchase)
- Piping bags.
- Piping tips (Leaf tip, round tip, petal tip, U tips, and drop flower tip.
- Waxed paper cut into 2″ squares.
- Flower nails.
- Piping bag couplers.
- Colored buttercream.
- Cookie sheets.
How to fill the piping bags.
Cut the tip off of the disposable iping bag, then put the inside part of the coupler into it. The edge of the opening should be right around the tip of the coupler to keep the icing from leaking out around the threads.
Add the piping tip you’ll be using and attach the coupler to it by screwing the cover part on over the plastic piping bag.
Put the tip in the palm of your hand and fold the bag inside out over your fingers so that you can put the icing into it. You can also use a drinking glass for this if you want both hands free, but I prefer to do it on my hand.
Put the icing into the bag using a spatula. Scrape the spatula against your fingers that are holding the bag open to get the icing off of it and into the bag.
Don’t fill the bag too full or it will be hard to control.
Fold the bag right-side out and press the icing down into the bag on one side. This will force any pockets of air up the opposite side so that you can get rid of them to prevent air bubbles while you’re piping.
If you really want to make sure there are no bubbles, you can “burp the bag” by squeezing some of the icing out before you start working. If there are any air pockets trapped at the tip, they’ll be forced out and you won’t have to worry about them interrupting your piping.
Twist the top of the bag closed and hold it between your thumb and index finger.
When you’re piping, squeeze the bag from the top, not the middle. That will force the icing down and out of the tip instead of up and out of the top.
Get some waxed paper squares and a baking sheet to store the piped leaves and flowers on.
How to pipe buttercream leaves.
To pipe buttercream leaves, start with a leaf tip and put it against a piece of waxed paper, then squeeze evenly while you move the piping tip. This is easy, but it will take some practice to get used to the motion of it.
For a wiggly leave, shake the bag a little as you’re squeezing it.
Squeeze, then stop squeezing as you pull the tip up and away from the surface to make the tip of the leaf.
Depending on how stiff the icing is, it might not end up in a point, but you can move that into place. You want the icing to be stiff enough to hold the shape but not so stiff that it won’t form a point at all.
How to pipe buttercream flowers.
Use a petal tip for flowers like roses or peonies. The fatter end should be held toward the bottom of the flower, and the thinner end should be the outer edge of the petals.
I’ll be the first to say that I stink at piping flowers, but it doesn’t matter unless you’re trying to make a specific, identifiable flower.
If you’re just making random flowers then you can get away with being less precise!
If the icing is too stiff the edges of the petals can be rough, but if it’s too soft the flower might not hold the shape. You’ll have to practice to see what consistency you like.
Add water to it to make it softer, or add more sugar to stiffen it up.
Pipe a dot of icing on a flower nail and stick a piece of the waxed paper to it.
Pipe a little mound of icing in the middle, then pipe two or threee petals around it to get started. Hold the thinner end of the tip up to make the edge of the petals, and move the piping tip in a little rainbow shape to make the curved petal shape.
Start with two petals, then three, then 5, then 7. Tilt the petal tip out a little farther with each row so that the outer petals are more open than the inner ones.
This will take some practice, and it might be hard to make roses that look like roses at first. Some people (myself incldued) find it easier to pipe roses on a sharpened dowel, then slide a piece of waxed paper under it to lift it off of the dowel.
Doing that lets you pipe it more upright, then it flattens out when you slide it off. Sometimes this gives you a more upright rose, but it all depends on what you’re comfortable with.
If you need to put the flower aside for a minute to refill the bag or use your hands for something else, you can stick the flower nail into a styrofoam cake dummy.
When you’re done, remove the flower from the nail using the waxed paper and put it on a baking sheet to let it dry.
I did these using two different colors from the Americolor Student Set #2. These were copper and egg yellow. I used peach for some of the drop flowers that I made later.
I put the yellow into the bag with the orange when it got low on icing, and it gave the two-tone effect on some of the flowers.
Pipe oak leaves with the petal tip.
I used the petal tip to make some autumn oak leaves by moving it back and forth and up and down.
I used a #3 round tip to make the brown veins on the oak leaves. This was the Americolor brown from the Student Set #1, but you could use the burgundy from the #2 set instead.
I piped the veins on and left the leaves to dry on the baking sheet.
To see an article showing the full food coloring set that I used for these flowers, click here.
Piping drop flowers.
I had added the yellow to the orange bag, and I changed the coupler and added a drop flower tip to the bag.
Drop flower tips usually have some kind of a pinwheel-type pattern and some have a little metal dot in the center. When you hold them straight up and down and squeeze quickly a little flower shape will form, and you can stop squeezing and pull straight up to release the icing and make the flower.
Depending on what they look like, you can pipe a small dot in the center, or leave them as is.
Since these are basically a piped dot of icing that’s shaped by the cut-out sections in the tips, the shapes can end up being pretty freeform, but these tips are good for making filler flowers around larger ones.
For the full icing recipe (it’s vegan since there’s no dairy) click here.
Piping chrysanthemums.
To make flowers that have small, stand-up petals like chrysanthemums, you’ll need a U-shaped piping tip.
The icing needs to be a little stiffer for these flowers, since softer icing can fall over and lose its shape.
Place the piping tip against the base of the paper or the mound of icing if you’re using one, then squeeze so that the icing comes out and sticks to the paper, then pull up. Stop squeezing and pull the tip up quickly to form the tip of the petal.
This takes some practice, but once you get the hang of it, it goes quickly.
Start by making a little mound of icing to use as the center.
Pipe two or three petals on the top edge of the mound.
Continue piping petals down the side of the flower, getting farther out as you go.
When the flower is as big as you want it, take the waxed paper off the nail and store it on the baking sheet to dry.
Once you have a good assortment of flowers, put them in a dry area where they’re protected from kids and pets, and let them dry out at least overnight.
Don’t close them in a sealed container because you want the air to be able to circulate around them to dry them out.
You can put them in a cabinet or somewhere like that, but I just put them on a protected shelf where they can dry without being disturbed.
The longer that they dry out the easier it will be to move them around. These can be done weeks ahead of time and they’ll just get harder, but they’ll never be as hard as royal icing.
For an article about orange and brown food coloring, click here.
Decorating the Autumn floral cupcakes.
I got some cupcakes from the grocery store for this, and that’s a good option if you’re not interested in doing a lot of baking. You can buy basic undecorated cupcakes and turn them into gourmet-looking ones instead by adding your dried flowers to them.
You could also decorate a basic iced cake with these. To see that, click to read this article here.
When the flowers are dry enough to handle, you can peel the waxed paper off. They might only need a few hours to feel like they’re dry enough, but don’t be fooled!
If you peel the paper off, the inside of the flower will probably still be soft unless the flowers have been drying for a long time. Since the waxed paper prevents the air from getting to that part of the flower, it will stay soft longer than the parts that are exposed to the air.
You can see here that the underside of the flowers were still wet when I pulled the paper off. These had only been drying for about 6 hours, so I was really pushing it. They were okay but the petals were very soft and I crushed a few because they weren’t really dry yet.
Place the flowers on the cupcakes, starting with the largest ones. Add the smaller flowers in, then put the leaves and filler flowers into the spaces to fill in any gaps.
This food coloring set makes some really nice autumn colors, and the flowers and leaves were perfect for a fall-themed cupcake decoration.
These would be perfect for fall wedding cupcakes or an autumn-themed birthday or baby shower. You can make the flowers up ahead of time and decorate the cupcakes when you’re ready.
You can also pipe some leaves directly onto the cupcakes to fill in spaces if you don’t want to make those up ahead of time.
