How to Pipe Buttercream Cherry Blossoms

Cherry blossoms are such sweet little flowers and always a welcome sight when spring comes around. They are relatively easy to pipe with buttercream and can be piped either directly on your cake or on parchment paper squares for more precise placement.

Watch the video below or read on for all the details on piping buttercream cherry blossoms.

Tools Needed

To pipe cherry blossoms you will need:

piping bags
petal piping tip (I like a tip #104 for small, delicate petals)
small round piping tip (#6 is great for piping small buds)
coupler (if you want to use the same bag of icing for petals and buds)
flower nail and parchment paper (if you are not piping directly on the cake)
pink and yellow food coloring

Buttercream

You’ll need a sturdy frosting like Italian Meringue Buttercream. Swiss meringue or American buttercream would also work.

Coloring your Buttercream

A quick Google search will show you cherry blossoms come in every color between white and bright pink. For the petals, I filled a large piping bag with both white and pink buttercream, but didn’t mix them together. This way my colors came out varied as I piped.

For the center of my cherry blossoms I used white and yellow buttercream to pipe the stamens. I’ve also seen cherry blossoms with pink or green stamens, so you can choose whichever color you like best.

I filled one piping bag with a small amount of white buttercream and one with a small amount of yellow. Because the flower stamens are so small and thin, I didn’t use a piping tip in these bags. Instead, I simply cut off the smallest amount from the tip of the bag so that only a thin strand of buttercream would pipe out.

How to pipe the cherry blossoms onto a flower nail

Have your bag of pink frosting fitted with a petal tip. Use a small dot of buttercream to adhere a parchment paper square to your flower nail.

Using your dominant hand to pipe, hold the bag perpendicular to your flower nail and position the tip so that the wider opening is at the center of your flower nail. The thinner opening of the piping tip will create the edges of your petals.

As you begin to squeeze the piping bag, slowly move the tip away from and back towards the center of the nail to create one petal. Rotate the flower nail and continue to pipe until you have five overlapping petals. Make sure that the centers and edges of the petals are overlapping, otherwise it will be difficult to peel off the parchment paper later.

Grab your white buttercream and pipe a cluster of thin white strands into the center of the flower. Try to pipe them so that the poke out it different directions.

Finally, using the yellow buttercream, pipe the tiniest dots onto the end of the white strands. That’s the whole flower!

Note: Piping the individual stamens is a bit tedious, but I love how realistic it makes the flowers look. The devil is always in the details! If you’re looking for something a bit easier, just skip this step or pipe a single dot of contrasting color in the center instead.

Arranging the flowers on your cake

As you pipe your flowers, place the squares onto a sheet tray or a plate. When all the flowers are done, place them in the fridge and let them chill until they’re completely firm.

When the flowers fully chilled, you’re ready to decorate your cake! I used brown buttercream to pipe branches for my blossoms, by they would look just as sweet by themselves. I also switched to a round tip on my bag of pink buttercream and piped small dots to look like flower buds. These help fill out the design of the cake.

Tweezers or a small offset spatula can be helpful in removing the flowers from the parchment and placing them on the cake. Don’t worry if some of the flowers break, you can still artfully place the broken pieces on your cake. I even used them to decorate the base of my cake, making it look just like the ground underneath a cherry blossom tree.