Weddingbee PRO

After teaching my cupcake class a few weeks ago, a lot of people wanted to know how I made flower cupcakes without a pastry tip, so I thought I would share my “secret” techniques with you lovely, PRO readers. I took a lot of photos of the process so that you would be able to “see” the process instead of just reading about how to do it. So let's begin!

First, you need a plastic disposable pastry bag. Then you need to cut the pastry bag straight across. The higher up you cut the bag the wider the petal will be, so just play around and try cutting it at different heights. I would roughly recommend cutting it about 1″-1 1/2″ up.

Then you need to cut a triangle or bird's beak shape out of the bag. Start at one end and cut up to the center of the bag…about 1/2″ up. Then make the same cut on the opposite side of the bag. Now you have created a bird's beak.

Now, you fill the pastry bag with a swiss, french, or italian style buttercream that you have colored to the shade you want your petals. Next, you need to cover the base of the cupcake with frosting. You can color it green if you want the flower to look like it's sitting on grass -completely your preference. Once the base is covered, you need to position you pastry bag on the cupcake so that the tip is like an open bird's beak (the seam line should be up and down, not side-to-side when piping).

Pipe the petals by putting pressure on the bag while slowly pulling away. Then, when you get to the end of the petal stop putting pressure and pull the bag away quickly. This will give you the pointed tip at the end of the petal.

Now remember, practice makes perfect so don't expect perfect petals your first time around! You can pipe as many petals as you want around the base.

Now, you pipe on a second layer of petals on top of your first layer.

Then, you can color some of the buttercream a different color and use it to pipe the middle of the flower. You can use a small round tip for this or just cut off a small tip of the plastic pastry bag -both will work.

One tip about the petals: to achieve a smooth petal that doesn't have tons of air pockets you need to make sure and mix the buttercream well, before using. You don't want to whip it to make more air bubbles, but rather smooth it out with a spatula or spoon.

Here are also a couple more photos of flowers that I have done in the past. To make the ladybug you just color the buttercream red and black and fill pastry bags with #2 tips. Pipe a red dot or body first. Then pipe a smaller black dot at the top of the larger dot to make the head. Next, pipe a line of black from the head to the bottom of the body. Lastly, pipe on some small dots of black for the ladybug spots.

I made these for Christmas time to look like poinsettias.

You can also use this tip to make large leaves for a flower. Of course stores also have pastry tips for this, but if you don't have one you can use this technique.