Decorating Techniques

Easy Buttercream Snowflakes

purple and blue cake with snowflake decorations

Oh January, perhaps the worst time of year for cake decorating. People are either still recovering from their holiday over-indulgences or flinging full speed into Valentines Day.

I spent early January working on a Buttercream Basics series, but I’m not quite ready for the V-day extravaganza yet 🙂

So instead I thought some simple buttercream snowflakes would be a perfect design for this weird time of year. I made snowflakes by piping a series of small dots, which are a bit easier to keep even than lines. AND I went super colorful with the base layer of frosting, because I really need some color to get me through winter!

How to Pipe Simple Buttercream Snowflakes

  • Start with a frosted cake. I did a sort of watercolor effect, but a solid color would work as well. Chill the frosted cake for a few minutes before starting the snowflakes.
  • For the snowflakes, use plain white buttercream and smaller sized piping tips. I used a #16 open star tip and #4 and #6 round tips.
  • The basic structure for the snowflakes is 6 lines or points, made up of a series of small dots. Start with a central dot, then pipe 6 lines of dots branching out from it.
  • To keep all the lines even, count so that each line is the same number of dots.
  • To add a little variety, you can pipe extra dots at the ends or in between lines.
  • You can also vary the size and number of dots to get different effects.

While I did play around and try lots of different designs, I thought the best looking ones were the simple ones!

If you make a buttercream snowflake cake, tag me @bakingbutterlylove on Instagram!

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