These piped buttercream flowers that you can make ahead of time include daffodils and little hydrangea blossoms. You can do these on piping nails and transfer them to cakes or cupcakes by air-drying them or by putting them in the freezer for a little while, and they make a really cute springtime cake. These are perfect for a colorful birthday cake, baby shower cake, bridal shower cake, or for Mother’s Day. And you don’t need a lot of experience, even a cake decorating beginner can do this with a little practice!
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Supplies you’ll need.
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 squares.
- Flower nails.
- Piping bag couplers.
- Colored buttercream.
- Cookie sheets.
For these flowers, I used some basic petal tips, ranging from 102 to 104, plus one that’s one of the curved ones for one of the daffodils.
Fill the piping bags about 1/3 to 1/2 full, don’t overfill them or it will be too hard to pipe with. You can put the open bag in a drinking glass to hold it while you put the icing in, or just put it on your left hand and fold it down to open it while you fill it.
Get started with the flower nail.
Put a dot of icing onto the flower nail to act like glue.
Stick a square of waxed paper onto the flower nail to pipe the flower onto. You can use parchment paper, but I find that waxed paper releases the flowers easier because of the coating on the paper.
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Pipe the blossoms.
Using a piping bag with a petal tip (I used a 102 or 103 here) and start piping the petals. Put the fat end of the tip pointing down and the thin end pointing up so that it pipes the thin edge of the petal on the outside. Pipe a little loop to create the petal starting at the center of the nail, loop up to the top edge of the petal, then bringing it back to the center to end the petal. (Watch the video at the end of this article for a full demo.)
Add more petals to make a 4 or 5 petal flower.
When you’re done, slide the waxed paper off of the nail and put it on a cookie sheet to hold it.
Make more blossoms with the other colors.
These can have 4 or 5 petals, depending on what you want to do. These aren’t supposed to be botanically correct, so you can do whatever you want.
Pipe the daffodils.
To pipe the daffodil petals, use a 104 tip and start at the center, pipe a longer petal, then move back toward the center to create a pointed petal.
For this flower, you’re going to make three petals, then overlap another three on top of the first three.
This is the base of the flower, and now you need to add the bell that stands up in the center of the flower.
To make the flower center, use the same piping tip but hold it vertically and pipe a stand-up circle in the center of the flower. If you need to pipe two to make it stand up that’s fine. The full video at the end of this article shows me piping two daffodils, so watch that if you’re not sure what to do!
After you pipe the flowers, put the flower on the cookie sheet. When the cookie sheet is full of flowers, put it in the freezer to harden the flowers up. If the icing that you used has butter in it, they’ll harden more than icing that only has shortening in it. If you’re using no-butter air-dry buttercream, you can also set them out to dry for a few days instead of freezing them.
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Add the flowers to the cupcakes.
To put the flowers on the cupcakes, work fast and peel the paper off of the frozen flowers. If the flowers are too soft put them back in the freezer for a while.
Place the flowers on the cupcakes.
Keep working fast and replacing the flowers in the freezer to harden up if you need to.
Place the parger flowers on first, and then work on the smaller ones. You’re going to fill in edges with leaves later, so you don’t need to cover the entire cupcake at this point.
For the smaller blossoms, do the same thing and peel the flowers off the paper and place them on the cupcakes quickly before they warm up!
Once all of the flowers are on the cupcakes, you can add leaves and other details.
Pipe details.
Use a round tip and pipe some dots in the center of the blossoms. You can pipe some green dots in the center of the daffodils if you want to, but that can mess up the bells, so be careful if you do it.
Using a leaf tip (Like this set on Amazon #affiliate link) pipe some leaves around the edge of the flowers.
Keep adding leaves until the gaps are filled in.
When you’re done with the leaves the cupcakes are finished! These are really pretty and since you can do the flowers ahead of time and have them ready, you can decorate the cupcakes quickly once they have the main icing on them.
Buttercream flowers are a nice touch for spring cakes and cupcakes, and they’re impressive to look at when you have a lot of them bunched together. They’ll be a nice addition to a dessert table at a party or wedding reception.
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