How to Make Realistic Buttercream Flowers

To pipe realistic looking buttercream flowers, you will need special piping tips, a flower nail, and a good buttercream recipe. You will also need quality food coloring.

After a bit of practice you will be able to create flowers for cakes that are both stunning and delicious!

This post is all about the set up and tools you need for making buttercream flowers. If you want a step-by-step tutorial for piping, check out my video How to Pipe Simple Buttercream Flowers. 

What tools do you need to make buttercream flowers?

Piping tips

Realistic looking buttercream flowers are piped petal by petal, using piping tips called petal tips. If you take a look at this Wilton piping tips chart, you’ll see a whole section of petal tips. The opening in these tips has a thicker end and thinner end. The thinner end makes the edge of the petal.

There are also a few other tips not included in the “petal” category which are used for flowers, and round or star tips are sometimes used for the centers.

Basic piping tip sets can be found at craft stores. For more variety, you’ll want to visit a specialty cake supply store or shop online. I use metal piping tips rather than plastic ones. I believe the metal tips are more durable and give your flowers a sharper edge.

Wilton and Ateco are the two major brands of metal piping tips that you’ll often see in the United States. Both brands use a similar numbering system to label their tips, making them mostly interchangeable.

 

Piping bags

Piping bags are essential for making buttercream flowers. You can either use disposable plastic bags or reusable bags which are typically made of a coated canvas material or silicone. Whichever type you choose, make sure that is it sturdy. There are some very thin, cheaper plastic piping bags which are prone to burst at the seams.

I like the disposable bags sold by Ateco. They come in a variety of sizes and having a large roll of bags allows me to set up many different buttercream colors at one time.

 

Couplers

Couplers are a two piece mechanism that allow you to change piping tips on the same bag. One piece of the coupler goes inside the bag while the other piece goes over your piping tip and screws it into place. Couplers are not a necessity but they do make life easier.

Flower Nail and Parchment Paper

A flower nail is a metal nail with a large, flat top that holds your flowers as you pipe. As you spin the nail between your fingers, the flat top acts like a mini turntable.  It allows you to hold your piping hand at any angle needed without bumping into your cake.

Additionally, piping onto to small parchment squares enables you to transfer your flowers to a tray and chill them in the refrigerator or freezer. This is beneficial for two main reasons. First, you can pipe flowers ahead of time to use later. Second, once the flowers are chilled and the buttercream becomes firm, you’ll have much more precise control of their placement.

A single, standard size flower nail will be all you need to pipe most flowers. You can also use larger nails to support larger flowers and concave nails for cup-shaped flowers.

If you’re a complete beginner looking for step-by-step help to get started, check out my Buttercream Flower Basics course. With just a few basic supplies, you can learn to pipe with confidence and create elegant floral cakes like these.

 

What type of buttercream works best for piping flowers?

Types of Buttercream

Most people will recommend using Swiss meringue, Italian meringue, or American buttercream for piping flowers. These types of buttercream are recommended because they’re sturdy enough to support your piped designs.

My recipe for Swiss Meringue Buttercream (video included)

My recipe for Italian Meringue Buttercream (video included)

American buttercream is certainly the easiest for beginners to make. However, it’s very sweet and the use of powdered sugar causes the buttercream to crust rather than maintain a glossy sheen. If you do use American buttercream, be sure to sift your powdered sugar well to avoid clogged piping tips.

Instead, I prefer to use Swiss or Italian meringue buttercream. Whether you use Swiss or Italian is a matter of personal preference; both types will yield a silky smooth and subtly sweet frosting that’s still sturdy enough for flowers.

Softer buttercreams such as cream cheese, German or French will not work for flowers.

Are you familiar with all these types of buttercream? Learn all about them here.

Likewise, be careful with flavor additives because they may soften your buttercream too much to pipe flowers. I typically use flavored buttercream to cover my cake and reserve a portion of plain vanilla buttercream for making flowers.

Buttercream Consistency and Temperature

It’s also important to consider the consistency and temperature of your buttercream. I prepare my buttercream differently for making flowers than I do for general frosting.

For general frosting purposes it’s best to use room temperature buttercream whipped to a really light and fluffy consistency. Whipping lots of air into the buttercream creates a nice light mouthfeel. You can  use this consistency for flowers, but you will notice more small spots on your flowers from air bubbles.

When I want to make super realistic looking flowers, I keep my buttercream much colder and denser. The colder buttercream is easier to work with and less susceptible to heat from your hands. The denser consistency helps eliminate air bubbles and pipes thinner petals with really nice, crisp edges. It also has really pretty glossy sheen.

How to Mix the Right Consistency

To achieve this consistency you must make your buttercream ahead of time and let it chill in the fridge. After the buttercream is cold, break it into pieces (I usually use a fork to scrape out chunks) and add to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on low speed until the buttercream is a smooth consistency with no lumps.

Depending on the temperature and amount of buttercream, this can take quite a while, but be patient! If the buttercream is very, very cold you can hit the sides of the bowl with a blow torch or a hair dryer, or hold the bowl over a gas burner flame for just a few seconds to help move things along (metal bowls only!). You just need to be very careful not to overheat your buttercream.

Korean Buttercream Flowers

This cold buttercream method is adapted from Korean style buttercream flowers. If you google Korean buttercream, you’ll see a hyper-realistic style of flowers. GG Cakraft, an innovator of this method, makes her iconic “glossy buttercream” by mixing all of the ingredients cold. This type of buttercream takes a really, really long time to mix, so I cheat by using regularly mixed buttercream at a cooler temperature. It’s not exactly the same but it does create some of the same qualities.

Maintaining Working Consistency

My last tip for maintaining the proper consistency is to set yourself up with a “cool zone” to hold your piping bags when not in use. This is especially helpful when the weather is very hot. If you have  stone counter tops, they may be cool enough on their own. If not, try setting up a sheet tray on top of a few ice packs. This way, if you are switching between colors, you can put the piping bags you’re not holding on the cool tray. The “cool zone” helps the buttercream stay cool without hardening like it would if you put it in the fridge.

 

Working with food coloring.

Types of food coloring

For buttercream, I’ve found gel food coloring to work very well. This category can be further broken down into “gel” colors and “paste” colors. Gels are usually water-based, making them a bit softer.  The advantage of gels then is that the softer consistency makes them easier to measure in specific amounts; you can squeeze out one drop at a time. The disadvantage of gels is that they do add some liquid to whatever you are dying.

Pastes are usually glycerin based, making them firmer and more concentrated.The advantage of pastes is that you need only use a very small amount, so that the coloring does not affect the consistency of your icing. The disadvantage of paste is that it’s so thick, you have to scoop it out with a toothpick and it’s hard to measure.

I love using Americolor’s “soft gel-paste” colors for buttercream. I find they create rich, vibrant colors without negatively affecting the consistency of my icing. They also work well for most of my other baking endeavors, so I don’t have to keep tons of different types of coloring on hand.

Mixing colors

Mixing colors is actually one of the skills I’ve struggled the most to develop. If you don’t have a natural understanding of colors or haven’t studied color theory, it can be really difficult to mix the exact colors you envision in your head.

Update: Since I first wrote this post, I’ve learned so much about coloring buttercream! So I’ve put everything I know into a free mini course for you! In the course you:

• learn about types of food coloring
• learn about the science of buttercream
• watch real demos of hard-to-mix colors
• learn how I work with the color wheel to mix exact colors in way less time

Click here to get Color Like a Pro for free!

Tips for Working with Different Colors

The first thing to consider is that you must compensate for is the color of your butter. Butter comes in varying shades of yellow, and as a result your buttercream will have a slightly yellowish hue.

This only becomes a problem when you want very white or light colors, or if you use very deeply yellow butter. I love the flavor of bright yellow butter from grass-fed cows, but I use cheaper, whiter butter for flowers.

A great tip is to add a tiny speck (very tiny, like the end of a toothpick) of violet food coloring to help offset the yellow from the butter. Just be very careful not to add too much violet, or your buttercream will take on an unappetizing grayish hue. You can also use white food coloring to achieve an even brighter white.

The next thing to consider is how any flavor additives will naturally create color. For example, you could get pink from strawberry, green from matcha, or brown from chocolate, just to name a few.

It’s best to work with any natural colors rather than against them, so plan ahead to make sure your color scheme and flavors will work together. As I mentioned earlier, adding flavorings will often affect the consistency of your buttercream.

I find it easiest to reserve a portion of plain, white buttercream to color as needed for flowers. That way, I can have great flavor and beautiful flowers on the same cake!

Color Development

You will notice that certain colors go through a sort of maturation process. Over time, the colors added to your buttercream will darken or intensify. Usually the maturation is most noticeable when using darker shades.

If you want to make sure you’re mixing exactly the right colors, there are two ways to deal with color maturation. The first way is to mix your colors well ahead of time. I would say at least one hour, but some colors take many hours to fully develop.

The second way is to apply a little heat, which speeds up color development.  You can heat your buttercream with five second bursts in the microwave, stirring in between each burst. You can also hold the buttercream (in a metal bowl) over a gas burner flame for a few seconds and stir to mix.

Either way, you don’t want to completely melt the buttercream. The goal is just to bring the temperature up until you can see that the color has darkened. If you choose this method, you will also need to return your buttercream to the fridge for a few minutes to bring it back down to a workable temperature.

I tend to mix only small amounts of each color, which makes the heating method easier to handle. If you are coloring large amounts of buttercream, it might be better to just plan ahead and allow time for the color to develop.

Creating a color palette

Choosing your color palette might be one of the most fun parts of decorating! This is where you really get to play with your creativity. You can try to mimic exact flower colors from real life or make up your own creations.

Whichever direction you choose to go in, I recommend taking some time to study real flowers or photos of real flowers. When you look very closely, you might notice that some leaves are more of a yellow-green while others are a blue-green. You might see that some flowers have many different colored petals, or that your favorite rose is actually a gradient of pink to white. Notice these nuances and apply them to your buttercream colors.

If you are aiming to make super realistic looking flowers, variations in color are key. Try using several different shades of the same hue within one flower, or notice that the centers of certain flowers are a completely different color. You can also paint a stripe of differently colored buttercream down one side of your piping bag so that the tips of your petals are highlighted with that different color. These subtle variations are the difference between nice looking flowers and amazing flowers that really pop.

Transferring flowers to your cake.

The easiest method for transferring buttercream flowers to a cake is to first pipe them on small squares of parchment paper.

Cut several squares of parchment paper just a bit bigger than the surface of your flower nail. Before you begin to pipe your flower, adhere the paper square to your flower nail with a small dab of buttercream.

After you pipe your flower, carefully slide the paper off the nail and onto a plate or baking sheet. After you have piped enough flowers, place your plate or baking sheet in the fridge or freezer to chill. Wait until the flowers are completely firm before transferring them to your cake.

Once the piped flowers are completely hardened, you can use your fingers to place them on the cake. I like to use my hands rather than tools for the most accuracy, but you do need to work quickly because the heat of your hands will start to melt the flowers right away.

You can use dabs of room temperature buttercream as a sort of glue to attach your flowers if your cake frosting is already cold. You can also pipe buttercream mounds to place the flowers on, which will create some height and varied angles instead of having all the flowers laying flat.

Another method for transferring flowers to your cake is to use scissors or a flower lifter. A flower lifter is a small pair of scissors with offset handles. Using scissors or a flower lifter allows you to transfer piped flowers immediately without chilling. you also do not need to use parchment paper if you use a flower lifter.

 

Using real flowers as a guide.

My last bit of advice for creating realistic buttercream flowers is to use real flowers as a guide. Start observing flowers in real life or looking at pictures online. Analyze the shapes of petals, how they fit together, whether or not they curve in a certain direction, etc.

The more you look at flowers, and I mean really look at them, the more you will realize just how much nuance and variation there is. And that’s good news! All that nuance and variation means the key to realistic buttercream flowers is really just a bit of imperfection. Don’t stress about piping things perfectly, because the beauty in nature is variation and imperfection.

If you pipe buttercream flowers, tag me @bakingbutterlylove on Instagram so I can see your beautiful work!