Mother’s Day is coming up (May 9) and because I live far away from my mom I was excited to focus on the aesthetics of some fun floral cupcakes. These citrus forward cupcakes are key lime cupcakes with a coconut-lime curd and a lemon-lime frosting. For this post, I will focus exclusively on the piping work. Although I love pretty baked goods, I don’t have a lot of piping experience and wanted to learn more about different types of tips, piping bag options, and how to put everything together to make beautiful designs. My tools were: a variety of tips I have acquired from the baking section of Safeway over the years, Betty Crocker Decorating bags, scissors, and electrical tape.
I assembled my piping bags by cutting off the tip of the decorating bags, slipping my metal tip of choice through and finally securing it with green electrical tape (as seen in the example above). The tape may have been superfluous but I just wanted to make sure that my setup wouldn’t leak. I used the left flat tip (left) for green leaves, the smaller (or fewer pronged, center left) floral tip for roses, the larger (or many pronged, center right) tip for yellow flowers, and the Christmas tree-looking tip (right) for blue flower. I first allowed the cupcakes filled with curd to cool. Initially, they were still a bit warm and my lovely green succulent design melted a bit. I learned my lesson and allowed them to cool for longer before attempting my flower designs.
I made the pink roses by using the fewer pronged floral tip and swirling around the cupcake, starting at the outside of the cupcake and working inward. I made the yellow and pink bouquet by first dotting with the yellow many pronged floral tip and then filling in spaces with the fewer pronged pink tip. The blue flower I made in a wave-like motion, moving the tip left to right while going clockwise around the cupcake. I finished it off with a yellow dot in the center. The multicolored bouquets were made by putting all of these techniques together: green leaves made by piping straight outward, pink roses made by swirling, yellow flowers made by dotting, and a blue flower made with a wave-like motion. I’m very pleased with how these lovely Mother’s Day-inspired frosting flowers turned out and am excited for future opportunities to make beautiful cupcakes.
Millennial's Delight 