Ah, mums. Those flowers you see for sale outside every grocery store once September rolls around. There are TONS of varieties of mums, but the garden variety that you see most often comes in shades of red, yellow, orange, purple, and white.
Icing Consistency
To pipe buttercream mums, you’ll want to use a stiff consistency icing. I almost always use Italian Meringue Buttercream for piping flowers.
Colors
To make your buttercream mums really pop, use two different shades of the same color. One for the center/stamens and one for the petals. For my white mums, I used a very light yellow/green color to pipe the centers.
If you’re new to piping buttercream flowers, check out my post How to Make Realistic Buttercream Flowers for an in-depth overview.
Tools
You’ll need to use a flower nail for these flowers. Cut small parchment squares and attach them to your flower nail with a small dot of buttercream. You’ll also need piping tips #2 and #81.
How to Pipe Mums Step-by-Step
Pipe a large mound of buttercream to start. This will form the center of your flower and support all of the petals. The larger you make this mound, the larger your flower will be.
Now fit your center color piping bag with a #2 round piping tip. Pipe a cluster of long strands sticking straight up at the top of the mound.
Next, you are going to start piping petals. To pipe petals you will need a #81 piping tip, which has a small c-shaped opening. Pipe petals in rings around the center strands, holding the tip so that the opening of the “c shape” faces the center of the flower.
For the first few rings of petals you can use the same center color, or you can go ahead and switch to your petal color. The innermost rings of petals should be smaller, tighter, and lean in towards the center of the flower.
Them, as you move down and outwards, gradually make the petals longer, more open, and relaxed.
You can try to pipe all of the petals very evenly, but I really like a more imperfect look. Either way, try to stagger the petals from ring to ring rather than making them all line up.
After piping your mums, place the squares on a tray and refrigerate until the flowers are completely firm. Once they are firm, you can easily peel them off the parchment and place them on your cake using your hands.
It’s also helpful to use a little more buttercream as glue to attach your flowers.
And that’s it! Watch the video below to see me piping mums in real time.
And if you’re on Instagram, come say hi! I always love to see what people are baking up!
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