Learn to Pipe: Beautiful Buttercream Blooms

1. Introduction: Hey there, cake enthusiasts. It's me, Amy Kimmel sharing my sweet obsession, which is cakes with you. When I was 18 I got my first job as a freshman cake decorator, and I worked for, Ah, large resort and I just love it. I love it every day. I love being cake artist. I've also worked in professional kitchens as a pastry chef. I've worked for mom and pop shops, worked for a large resort. I've worked for high end restaurants on I really tried it all. I love it for this class. What I want to do is show you how I make buttercream flowers, which is not just looking up how other people do it. I actually like to go look at photos online or I might be out walking. And I see a really beautiful plant, really beautiful bloom on its or maybe a book. It really just goes from there, and I look at it and say, Wow, that's really great. I wonder if that's something that I can make edible through the class. I'm gonna show you how to pipe flowers and then we're going to freeze them for our project . And the project is gonna be cupcakes that we're gonna create little floral arrangements on my favorite part about teaching is seeing the excitement that students get wasn't realized that Oh my gosh, I can actually do this when you start something new. It's not about trying it once and knowing how to do with nobody just helped anything. It's the same thing with decorating. I really want students to walk away from the class, feeling more confident in their skills, being really energized, to get the equipment and to start practicing and creating. And to really understand that being a cake artist is about looking at something in real life, on translating it into a confection. And if you want to be good and you put it in time, then eventually you will get there. 2. Tools: he there? Welcome to this first lesson. I want to talk to a little bit about the tools that you need to complete the project and all of the things that we're gonna go over in this class. So you have all of my tools laid out in front of me or my muse on class, meaning everything in its place. I'm gonna talk to a little bit about each tool, good places to find them, and we'll get into how to use all these tools later on in class. First things first. You want to make sure that you have piping bags. I have these featherweight bags and you could see that they're a little bit stained their older. But I love these because you can reuse them. They're really durable. They last forever. So just have a few of those on hand. You can also get disposable piping bags and you can buy those in bulk at Walmarts or Michael's wherever your local craft store or cake decorating store is. I also have some couplers. I have the older Wilton coupler system and the New World. A couple of systems. I just happen to have both because I build up my collection over the years. I really love the new system, though, because it has your piping with the older systems. Sometimes the buttercream will come out of the scenes, and this new system really prevents that, which is really great. We also have flour. Nails were gonna be needing knees. I have plastic one and a middle one, and with the Wilt Medal flour nails, they come in different sizes. This is a size nine on, and it's a smaller one. Size seven is really good, all around size for all types of flour piping you can get either or anything with the metal one is that right? After you wash it, you want to make sure that you dry it because it can be prone to getting rust around on the bottom. So you really want make sure that you're taking proper care of your tools. Next up, we have our colors. I like to use the Wilton color right system because it's a dropper system. So if you have to mix another batch of a certain color, you are you know exactly how much you put in the first batch. If you put into drops a red one drop of glue into one cup of butter cream. Then you know that you'll do one cup of butter cream the same amount of drops up those colors again to get the exact same color. So I really love that. You can also get the little pots will go color or there's America color gel colors. You just don't want to use the grocery store food coloring because it's so liquidy, and it'll really water down your buttercream and kind of ruin it. So you wanna make sure that using a gel color and these you can pick up again at the local craft store cake decorating store, go to amazon dot com or any online kick supplier. Then I also have some parchment squares, and this is what we're going to be piping our buttercream flowers onto so that we can just pop them off flower nail and then put them in the freezer so these are just cut out of parchment. You can cut them for different sizes for different flowers. You can also use wax paper, depending on what you have, Then I have some nice iris fresh is and you really want to make sure that you get fine tipped brushes. I believe I got these in a set on amazon dot com for about $5. So that's a pretty good deal. Um, you don't want why your brushes, they're not gonna give you as much detail. These have been really great, and I haven't had any problems. Fallout, So really nice to have those. I have my box of tips. You don't have to go out and get so many tips. You could just start out with the ones that were going to go over in class. Or you can buy a starter kit. It's up to you. I just like this. It's a nice storage case. It's really great. Teoh If, um, you're doing a wedding cake and you need to take us along for any finishing touches or something like that. I really love this case on def. It's something that you're planning on doing for more than a hobby or as a career. That's definitely something that you're going to want to build up eventually. Now we're going to be mixing a lot of colors for our buttercream, so I definitely have some bowls and just I have member spatulas here can use spoons if you like. It's up to you to something Teoh thoroughly mixed the butter cream with. I also have just a few farmed and tools, and these are just random tools that I had and you'll see Leader, how we use thes. You could just use a spatula or even toothpicks that works to. I just want to show you that thes have a multipurpose. So if you have any of these lying around, then go ahead and pull them out for this class. I also have some clearer almond extract, and we're going to use this to paint on our buttercream on. The reason that use extract is because it has an alcohol content. So when you paint on the butter Creon, the alcohol will evaporate. But the color will stay there, and you need something to mix the colors with because otherwise they would be too concentrated, too dark. We'll get more into that later on in the class. But the biggest thing Teoh know about the extract is you want to make sure it's clear, so amend no flavor. Vanilla butter, lemon great extracts to use. Stay away from caramel or coffee because the really dark in color and check your vanilla extract really wanna make sure that you get the clear vanilla extract, which you can pick up that Michael's Wilton manufacturers that type of extract and next up is our cookie sheet. Um, for the cookie sheet, you want to make sure that it fits in your freezer. This is what we're gonna be putting our buttercream flowers onto, freeze and store and then placed on our cake. So if you have a side by side freezer, that's not as wide. Make sure that whatever you're putting your flowers on is going to fit. You can even put them on a plate if that's what you have. I also have just a little dish for mixing my colors in. I think this came from a sushi set, so whatever you have certain colors might stains. I don't use a nice white piece of China or something like that, you something that you don't mind getting a little bit color on in case it doesn't come off . And lastly, I just have a kitchen towel, and it's always great to have a kitchen towel when you're working on cakes of any kind, but especially with buttercream, because it can get a little bit messy. And I attend to stay away from wet towels because the butter and greasy myth from a buttercream won't stick as much to a wet towel as it opposed to a dry towel. And there again, make sure that the Talbot. If you get color everywhere and you need to wipe it up or wipe it off your hands, it's going to get staying. So make sure that it's a towel that you don't mind getting some color on it. You'll also be needing a batch of buttercream and a batch of cupcakes. I've provided a recipe for the Swiss Meringue buttercream, which is my favorite to use because it tastes delicious. You can add so many different flavors to it. It stands up to piping really well, and it frost really smooth onto a cake. Plus, you can store it, freeze it for up to a month and reuse it later on. It's really fantastic, my cat. So on the project page you'll find a rescue for that. I've also supplied the chocolate cake recipe that I use for teaching this class. You're welcome to use that recipe. However, if you want to make you are favorite cupcake recipe, even go right ahead. It's up to you. And in the next lesson we're gonna look at the resource is that I used to create my buttercream flowers. I'll see you there. 3. Resources: Hey there, cake enthusiasts. Welcome toe lesson to this lesson is all about Resource is how do I find inspiration for the cakes that I create? My favorite source is a book that was given to me as a gift years ago when I was living in Montana and it's called The New Sunset Western Garden Book, and I have really used this book took garden. But I've used it a good bit for making flowers out of buttercream. This is my first go to resource, and obviously not all of you have this book at home and I'm not telling you to run out and buy this book. However, any type of gardening book is really great to have on hand, especially if you watch this course and decide. Hey, I think private buttercream flowers is gonna be my main gig, and it's really what I want to Dio would go out and get yourself a gardening book. This one I recommend as we move through the following lessons in this class, I'm going to be using this book as reference now. There are also other great sources to find flowers that you're going to pipe for this class and one of them is right outside your door. Yeah, nature. Sometimes it's fun to just go out for a walk or a hike. Or if you're already avid hiker, then that's even better. Take your camera along, find some really beautiful flowers and snap photos. Bring them home, upload them to your computer, print out a copy and you can really create something awesome. You can also go online. I personally use Google and I'll just tape in floral arrangements. I'm the reason I type that in, as opposed to just flower because of you. Type in flower. Anything will come up, which is great to I like to type in floor arrangements because typically when you are piping flowers, you're not just gonna pipe one kind. I mean, if if that's your project or that's the order that you've taken for a customer, then by all means, just do the one kind. But if you're looking for some type of inspiration and you're not really sure where to go or what color scheme type of floral arrangements does hype in floral butter cream cakes because I know that's tempting. I really encourage you, Teoh create your own masterpieces not recreate somebody else's. So type in the floral arrangements and you're going to get a lot of photos off. Really beautiful flowers that go together are complementary in color. Or maybe they're monochromatic, meaning the same color but different shades of that color. You'll also be able to see what leaves and stems the flowers are actually on. I know with this book in some of the photos and other gardening books, sometimes they just take a photo off the flower. Whereas if you go and look at an actual flow arrangements, you're going to see all of the foliage around the balloons and really get an idea of how to make your cake look more realistic with what you pipe on it. Another really great area of inspiration is going to local gardens or gardening stores. Here in Phoenix. We actually have maintained native gardens that you can go to a and check out really cool plants that only grow here. I think it's really fun to showcase the region that you're in. For example, I'm in the desert, so maybe piping succulents on a cake and Capt. I flowers. That's really cool, and it really gives people an idea of where your ideas are coming from. I find them in my backyard and you can go to gardening stores, which I really enjoy because typically a gardening stores, they have their plants blooming and in a really great period of the plant's lifecycle. So for annuals, for example, you'll see the flowers already on the plant because they want to sell it to you. So they're going to make sure that that plant is already showing off. So the purpose of going through all these resource is is to show you that cake decorating ISS fun. You get to go out and be in the world and be in nature and enjoy the things that are nearby or even drive or vacation. Maybe you go to Hawaii, and then you think, Oh, wow, I really love biscuits. That is fantastic. I just want you to start thinking, get the wheels turning. How can I make this creative? How can I make this really unique? And how can I make it remind? How can I share my style, my experience, my voice? Really? Because it's another form of art in any form of art, you share your voice just like writers do. Just like dancers dio. So now that I just gave you that big, meaningful speech, hopefully you're really excited to move on because in the next last hand, but we're going to be talking about how to match the colors of the flowers that you've been inspired by. 4. Color Matching: Hey there, cake enthusiasts. Welcome to less than three. In this lesson, we're going to talk about color matching, So flowers are very versatile in the colors that they're composed up. And I want to show you how to really get that perfect color that you're looking for and understanding how buttercream works and how the colors work so that you can get that perfect finished product for this. We're going to be needing our bulls and spatulas our colors and some of our buttercream. And I also have the gardening book that I mentioned in the previous lesson. And we're going to be using that for our examples in this class. In the next lesson, I'm going to be teaching you how to pipe a really realistic looking raspberry. So I thought, let's start with color matching a raspberry. I already had my book earmarked. Gonna get started with this. As you can see, there are darker ones and there are lighter ones. I'm gonna start with this lighter color because I really like it, and it looks more like a really ripe raspberry that you would want to eat. I have the tools that Mimi prepared and I have a little bit of butter cream in this bowl, and I have my page open to the raspberry so I can get a really direct color match. Now. With this, we can see that it's definitely red, and it's not like a break fire engine red. It's a little bit more of maybe a burgundy red. So with the color rate system, I have just the base red and I also have a base crimson. So I'm gonna start out with my base red and just do a couple of drops. That was more than a couple. I got a little bit of my finger and it turned into a lot on fight and always keep a town nearby. Really glad this happened so I could show you that sometimes working with colors is a little messy. So if you want to use gloves, go ahead. So I have my read in the bull, and I'm just gonna mix this up. As you can see, it's nowhere near dark enough. But the thing you really want to remember about buttercream is that, by the way, I'm adding more of the base red. You want to remember that buttercream as it sets and dries dries a little bit darker, so you don't want to go super dark and perfectly matched the color. Just remember that it's gonna dry a couple shades darker than what you're actually seeing more of my beasts red in there, and that's a little bit closer. It's almost like a pinkish red, but I also know, like I said, this dry a couple shades darker. So I'm gonna add a drop of my crimson to take it a little bit deeper, a little bit away from the pink. So I put two drops in their of this crimson, and that took it a little bit more away from the pinky read. But it's still kind of pink, so as you can see, it's a process, and you always want to start with just a little bit of color and see where you're standing based on how much butter cream you have. Because you don't want to have a little bit of butter cream Adam on color for a really small project. And then it's way too dark, and you have to add more butter cream to lighten it. We don't want that, so always make sure you're starting small, just a few drops and go from there. You can always add more color and build on the color, but you can't take it away. So I added a couple more drops of crimson in there. This is really getting to a color that I'm like. That's pretty close. It's actually really close to the color that is right at the top of this raspberry, which is just a really light, Um, crims me almost pinkish read. And I know that this is going to dry a couple shades darker, and you can also paint on it at the end as well. So I really like this color, and this is what I'm going to go with here. I'm going to show you how to color match a violet because it's a different color, obviously, and we're not just using one color from our color system. We actually have to mix colors. There's no purple in the color right system, so we're gonna have to use our blue and are red, and this violent right here is what I'm going off. So it's kind of a deep royal purple, so when you look in colors, it's really important to look at this and obviously red and blue go together. But is this more of a cool color, or is it more of a warm color? And when I look at this, I think this is a really cool color. Cool, meaning it has more of a bluish hue to it, whereas warm means more of a yellow or red hue to it. And even this color behind here on the same flower is more of a warm tone. So if I wanted to achieve this one, I would have more on the red balance of coloring in my buttercream. But we're going to go with this deep royal purple color. I have my buttercream, and I'm going to, and I just have really a little amount in here going to start by using my base red, and I put three drops in here, and that may seem like a lot, but I also know that I'm going for a deep shade. So with that, I'm going to put four drops of the blue because, remember, we want mawr of a cool tone than a warm tone in this, and it's coming out just as I expected more on the blue end and you condemn finitely. See the balance of blue and in it. And I like that and it's It's already really close, actually, and I know that it's going Teoh dark in a little bit. But I can really see the difference between the coolness in this compared to the bottom color on this flower, as opposed to the warmth in the top color. And I know that this will deepen up a little bit, and I really like that I actually am going Teoh. Add another drop of glue to. It's just because I like a really rich royal purple color, and you can see me mixing a lot. You really wanna make sure the color is evenly incorporated in there, because if there's a little pocket of color left in your buttercream, when you go to pipe, that will come out and you'll see like really Jarque stripes in your butter cream. So there we go. That's pretty close. I really like that color, and that's for our violent that we're going to pipe in a leader lesson. Now that you've seen two examples of color matching, you will be more prepared to create your own colors in the future for any flowers that you choose to pipe a few things you want to remember. When choosing different colors, you want to look at the warmth or the coolness of the shade, and that will give you the base colors that you need to add it. Always start with a small amount and work your way up because you can always add more color , but you can take it away. You can add more about a cream, but then you're gonna end up with a lot of this custom colored buttercream and really no use for it. Also, buttercream drives a couple shades darker, so joking, overzealous with the coloring and try to get the exact match. Get a little bit lighter and it will darken up to what you're looking for. And lastly, is something that's really important that we didn't talk about in the lesson is that when you add a lot of color to buttercream, it's definitely gonna change the texture and the flavor. Food coloring is not flavorless, and I know that some of the colors, especially Wilton Red, says no taste red. But in my personal opinion, it's so have taste, so I don't recommend covering a cake in all black flowers. Course, if that's what the client wants, then go for it. Personally. I prefer pastels because then you can't really taste the coloring. Or if I'm using darker colors, just use those flowers as accents. That wraps up this lesson in the next lesson. We're going Teoh, learn how to pipe a raspberry using the color that we matched in this awesome. See you there. 5. Raspberry: Hey there. Welcome to lessen. For in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to pipe a raspberry. And in the following two lessons, I'm going to show you the violet and the rose. The reason I want to start out with ease is because the really good examples of decorations that you can just pipe and be done with you don't have to manipulate them or add extra colors. They look beautiful on their own, so there are really great spot to start with to get you more comfortable with piping flowers. They're also really popular, really common. You see them everywhere. So if it's something you want to make a career out of there going to be flowers that you'll have to know anyways, Teoh, get that dream job or start your own business. And in this lesson, you will need the buttercream that we already colored. In the previous lesson we have that done, you're gonna need a piping bag fitted with a coupler, and I'm using a Wilton size to tip. I have my raspberry reference photo in the book, and you'll also need a flower nail your parchment paper and your cookie sheet. Let's get started. I've already prepped my piping bag with my couple er and a size to Wilton tip. And I have the raspberry colored buttercream in the back. I have my nail here, and if you're right handed, you're going to be holding your piping bag in your right hand. So I always grip right here like this. And then I twist with the opposite hand, and that ensures that my buttercream is not gonna come out of the top of the bag. And if you're not sure how to prepare a bag, you can check out my other class, which is learned to pipe borders. And in that class, I go really induct into how to prepare the piping bag. But when we get started with piping something you want to start out by putting just a little dot on your nail to secure your parchment paper, and that just keeps it from sliding around and through the parchment paper. I can still see the border of my nail there. So with the raspberry and I typically like Teoh, you could hold your nail up and down and go at a 90 degree angle. But for me, I have gotten used to it, so I always hold it at a slight angle. And when I teach people how Teoh pipe, I never liked Teoh change my tip in the middle of piping a flower. Sometimes other instructors will show you a tip to pipe your base, and then you switch your tip out or use another bag with another tip to create the pedals or the finishing touches. I never do that. I am a one tip per flower girl, and that's how I like to roll. So for this raspberry moving to start by building our base, so I'm just applying pressure and I'm kind of moving in a circular motion and with a raspberry, it's kind like a cone. It's a cone shape. This would be the base of our raspberry and in the smaller part is moving up towards the top. So building into kind of a cone shape and it doesn't look pretty, but it doesn't have Teoh. The reason that we're using the size to tip is because it's the perfect size to get kind of the little seeds of the raspberry to look really realistic. And as you can see, the color is already deepening, and I really love the way that it's looking. So I'm going to start by piping small dots around and you can see I am turning the nail as I g O. And then I can twist back to get to the other side. This is where you want the now. Could you imagine doing this without? And now I couldn't Do you want a pipe? Your first ro The holy around. And it's okay if there's a little spikes on the end of these dots because on a raspberry it has little hairs, so it actually adds a little bit more realism to it. And then you want to start on your next row above that and use a smaller paper because I'm struggling with the size of this paper. And, uh, you definitely don't want that and keep moving up. You're still under base with your dots. Some of them might be bigger than others. Some of them might be smaller. They might not be in perfect rows. That's okay, because the beauty of piping flowers or Berries or fruits of any kind as opposed to other pipe decorations, is it in nature? These are not perfect. So you don't want them to be on your cake either? Nothing. Just pipe someone top. And there you have a raspberry and then you can just pull this right off your nail and then take that and stick it right on your cookie sheet, and that's how it's going to go in the freezer, and that is the raspberry. 6. Violet: Hey there. Welcome to Lessen Five. This is the lesson of the violet. So we already colored our purple for the violent color. And this flower has a little bit of a darker end. So I'm gonna actually show you a really fun technique. Teoh, get that dark tip on it and really make it more realistic. So for this lesson, you're going to need your buttercream that we've already colored. I have a bag fitted with tip 59 s, and I am not filled it with butter cream yet because I'm going to show you how to get that striping technique in here. I have my flower. Now I have an artist Brash. I have my red and blue colors like we used previously. I have my reference photo and I have my apartment squares. So let's get into the violet. The violet is a really a commonly seen piped buttercream flower. So it's really great Teoh know exactly how to do it. And for this I want to show you how Teoh take it up a notch. I already have my buttercream that I colored the deep purple and it's dark and up a little bit so It's really getting close to that light color that we have there, which I love. I'm actually going to just use my bull here and I'm going Teoh put and I I love multipurpose. I don't like Teoh dirty anything if I don't have Teoh. So if this seems a little weird to you, to me, it is not because I do not want to pull out another bull or another plate or anything, really to use to college this. So I'm just going to use the edge of my bowl here, and if it runs down in, that's OK because it's already purple and I'm gonna take a drop of my blue and a drop of my red. And they already ran together. And I'm taking my artist's brush here and just coloring it on the edge of my bowl. And I know there that I have purple, and when I'm looking at my tip, I can see that there's a wider end and there's a sooner end and it's curved. That's the beauty of the 59 s, because when you pipe with this, it's gonna give you that nice, curved pedal. You want to make sure that you already have your bag fitted with your tip because you need to see where the edge of the pedal is gonna be in relation to the bag so that you know where your coloring. So I want to go with the thinner and because that's going to be the edge of my pedal. And that's where I want the really dark purple on my violet. So I have some purple on my brush here and I'm just really going Teoh, pull the bag down so I can get access in there. I really want to make sure I have color on my brush. And then we don't look at where that thin part of my tip is and be able to see it from the top of the bag. And then I can cool this bag straight and have that tip pointing up. So I know exactly where to go and then go inside my bag and go all the way down the coupler . I'm really thickly paint. Ah, strip of that color up and you could even look down in the bag and you can see where that point is on the tip. So you know where to paint the line, and then once you have that line painted in there, you can go ahead and add your purple buttercream to the bag. Try not to mess up that part that you painted in there because we don't want it. Teoh mix in there. We have it filled. And when I pipe, I can see him getting that dark line on the edge. Exactly what I wanted to pipe the violet. It's the same concept as the raspberry. You're holding the bag in one hand, the nail in the other and twisting. You want to start out with it dot of butter cream on your now to attach apartment. You want to kind of visually separate the nail in half in your mind, so we're gonna piper first to larger pedals on 1/2. So the trick is to have the end of the tip, the straight edge kind of parallel to you when you're starting to pipe and then as you turn , it really gets that first pedal to fan out nicely and you kind of get some rippling in it, which I like, because it just looks really realistic. And then, for our next we're going to overlap over top of the previous edge of the 1st 1 And again, I'm starting, starting almost parallel Teoh the center of the previous pedal and then spinning. And then I get to really nice overlapping pedals and then the way I like to do the violent and you could see to that it's kind of half. So we're gonna do these top pedals here. I like to. Since this larger one is directly across from these two, I like to actually turn and then don't completely connect it. Go a little bit further, player. Allow your that. Your tip is parallel to the previous two pedals and we're turning. And I like to put a little kind of like a little ruffle on the edge there. No, I have three pedals. And then for the last two, I'm going over top and it's you can see the 1st 2 pedals. We pipes within the larger 3rd 1 So I'm gonna go right in between the's creases here, and that's gonna be my final pedals, and these ones are a little bit thinner. Here we have the violet. You just take that off and put it on your cookie. tray to be put in the freezer later. The thing you want to keep in mind with the violin is as you're turning the now to just really take your time because those pedals are going to come out really nice. And even if you're rotating the flower down really fast or trying to speed through it, so just go slow and you really get the results that you're looking for. Also, if you really want to put a finishing touch on your violet, you can take a bag filled with a little bit of yellow buttercream fitted with a number one Wilton tip and pipe a couple dots in the center. I'm not really make it look realistic. In the next lesson, we're going to discuss the Rose. See you there. 7. Rose: Hey, students. So this lesson Lesson six is going to be about the Rose. I mean, this lasted I want to show you the kind of industry standard of how to Piper rose out of butter cream. But we're also gonna look at actual roses and how many variations There are nature, so you could go with the standard. Or you could really branch off, get creative on to some other type of rose like a rock rose, maybe, or a shrub rose. So we'll get in depth with that and look in the book for examples. Let's get into it. Looking at the Western Garden Book, you can see that there are many variations of roses. Actually, roses are the one flower that probably has the most variations because they've been crossbred and hybridized so much over the years. I just love roses, and we're gonna look at the really popular method of piping them. But if you want to get creative, you can look into some of these other types. I also really love the versatility of colors in the Rose. Here's a really beautiful cream colored one, and this is just one page. I mean, this book has multiple pages, all about the rose And if you really want to get them realistic, And what I love about this book is that it tells you about each kind of rose what size they are, where they grow. So if you were looking for something just so similar to real life, you could look at the size of it. And maybe it's 1.5 inches wide on average, so you would piper 1.5 inch wide flower. Look at the beautiful fuchsia of this rose and see, You can see this is really different. This almost doesn't even look like a rose right here, but it iss and then we have these as well, and here to that doesn't look like a rose to me, but it ISS and here's some really beautiful yellow roses, and it's really great to look at the plant around it as well, because you can see that the roses yellow but the buds are almost burnt orange. Still more pages of roses on this one is really gorgeous. And if you're going to do something like this in later lessons, we're going to look into how to get more of this color onto the flower itself. So that is our rose. And for this lesson, I'm going to try to color match this one right here. I really like this color and I think it'll go nice in an arrangement with the violet and the raspberry that we already piped back to the color matching. So I mentioned that I'm going to choose this really light PCI rose right here and that stores is also very similar to what I'm going to show you. As faras piping goes, I have a little bit of butter cream on. I have my colors on just to keep flowing. I also have my flower now my parchment papers and my bag and my timing bag is fitted with a tip 104 which is the rose petal piping tip. Now, for a color so light and for such a small amount of buttercream, I really have to stress that you need to start really small, especially with these color rights, because I dropped each of these maybe too much. So we almost want to go for half a drop on this color I can see is a little bit more on the orange side, so I definitely want pink in there. But I want to have a little bit of orange. I see about color, right system is it has both. So I'm gonna start with just I have your more comfortable just kind of dab a tiny bit, not even a drop. Just you're just dabbing the top right on the edge there, and that'll give you just a really small amount of color, and I could take a little bit off of that and you can see that that already gave us, uh, kind of really pale pink. But that was a really tiny amount that wasn't even half of a drop of the coloring. Now I want to take it a little bit of orange. So again, I'm just gonna dab the orange on the edge of my bowl and take some of that orange and it tone it down a little bit. But I'm actually not going to add any more color because that right there already is plenty dark. It's really close. It's more close to the inside color of the rose, which I'm fine with. It's gonna be a really pretty finish at the end. Mix it up. Really? Well, remember that if you don't have it all mixed together, you're not going to get a uniform color when you pipe it. So there I have the color that I'm gonna go with. And that's really pretty. I love that. It's just a super pale, peachy color, and we're gonna put that right into our sleeping bag. So again, we're holding down the top edge. I'm putting that directly in. I'm gonna put all of it in. I probably only had about 1/4 of a cop about a cream in here to start with, so that'll fit nicely. It's me bag. Push it down to the bottom. I'm ready to Piper Rose. So let's pipe are Rose. I have my reference photo here in front of me. I've already piped if you just to kind of get the hang of it. You always start by putting your dab on the right was now and your parchment for the rose. I like to start with a cone in the center. I just kind of move my tip back and forth to get that calm. Kind of like a novel on Cone. I take my white and set that right in the middle Spin my rose Now drop down And then we have the center of our rules. I'm gonna overlap that previous and I'm gonna start with the wide under the tip about halfway down that base, my narrow end is perpendicular The roads now overlap those ends. What about three pedals on there? That's the center of our rose. Now I want to take the wide end and go just a little bit below that previous row pedals on the narrow ends going to be angled out just a little bit more And we're gonna pipe, you know, the row of pedals. And then for the last one passed through you're widens further down narrow and its angle that more. We're just gonna that final roll Right on. There they have it. Nice small tyros. You don't have to pipe with money, Rose. You could make your base a little bit shorter and pipe your pedals and get a small arose. Same goes with the opposite way. Pipe a larger base and add more petals depending on what size you wanna make Euros. Here I have a few. They're different sizes. Can you just slide that right off goes on your cookie sheet and those can go right into the freezer. Thanks for watching this lesson. If you had fun learning about the raspberry, the violent and the Rose, then you're really going to love the following lessons because we're going to talk a little bit more about customization and really getting more creative. I'll see you there. 8. Choosing Flowers: Hey there. Welcome toe. Lesson seven. This lesson We're not going to be piping anything. We're gonna talk about technique and it's really important that we go through this before we move into the following two lessons or we're gonna learn really custom flowers and more advanced piping and some extra special coloring. I would like to show you some examples of flowers that you can pipe. We're gonna look at them and we're gonna talk about whether or not we can pipe amount of buttercream and then start the process of what colors do we need and what tips will we need and also doing it any extra tools or extra colors, brushes, some really gonna get in depth. And it also gonna show you examples of flowers that you can't pipe out of buttercream. So you really know how to judge. Let's get into it. Now. We're looking at the Camelia flower, and this is the first good example of a flower that is totally pipe herbal. And we're actually going to learn how to fight this flower. And it's also a little more complex because, as you can see, while the pedals are rounded, they also come to almost a point, and there's a lot of detail on these. There's a lot of different colors, and there's even stripes on here. So it's a great example. Yes, this can be piped. Let's look at one that cannot be piped. Here is the meadowsweet. Now you can see that there are a lot of a little parts to this flower, and that's the reason that you couldn't pipe it. I mean, there's no way that buttercream is going to be starting enough to build the foundation for this and then get all these little wispy pieces off of it. So that's a really great example, and the odd shape to it as well. How they kind of cluster would not really translate another great example of something that you wouldn't be able to pipe out about. A cream is the ginger lily, and you can see that the flowers themselves are so extremely small and delicate, and they kind of have a really small base off of this central stem, and then all of these little filaments that spike out off of it. This would not be a good choice for piping with buttercream. Let's look at something that really would translate. And this is actually one of my favorite flowers in real life. It's so beautiful. And that's the Dahlia now. Not all versions of the Dahlia rpai purple, but certain ones most definitely are. I really love this one. The difficult part would be getting these inner pedals that are kind of almost like funnels or something like this would be extremely difficult to pipe. However, a dahlia such as this would translate very nicely. Even this Dahlia could be piped. Now, when we're looking at these as far as choosing what kind of tip you would need for this because the pedals on this have just a really thin, sharp edge. And we saw with the tip 59 s that you can Piper pedal. We saw with the tip 104 that you could get really thin, crisp edges so I would use a 104 for this, and I would use it in a method that we did with the violet piping those pedals really turning and getting them to be a little bit thinner and with ease. You would start with the bottom layer and then build on top of it, and I would definitely pipe a cone because you can see that these have a little bit of height to, um so Piper kun and then pipe your flower petals around it in graduating levels. Here's the hibiscus, which is also a great instance, where you can pipe this out of buttercream and these air much larger pedals. I really like how they have a little bit of ruffle on the end, so you would just work on getting that ruffle. I would use a tip 104 and I would just pipe my pedals in much the same fashion that I did with the violet, but maybe a little more of an angle just because you can see that the flower kind of is almost like a cone down in words and the petals come up and out. And you can also add some color on the inside painting wise, and we'll get into that later. We've looked at quite a few flowers that you could probably with a tip, one of four, so I just want to give you an idea of something that you could pipe with a different tip. Here I have a star tip. And that's to show you that with the lilac, it's a big kind of bumpy cone base with all these little flowers all over it, so you could actually pipe a large base and then put that in the freezer to set up and then pipe all your small flowers all the way over it, and then that would give you a really big, beautiful bloom of lilac. In the last hour we're going to talk about in this lesson will be the renown Kya lis, just right next to our raspberry. And the ridiculous, you can see has a lot of really thin, more tightly grouped pedals than, say, the Rose. But it's also built on a conical base, so I would pipe it almost in the same fashion as a rose. But I would be cramming a lot more pedals in there and in the next lesson were actually going to learn how to pipe the Rin Oculus. I'm going to go with this lighter pink color here because we've already pipe violence in this color, but we're going to pipe this ridiculous, so I will see you in the next lesson. 9. Ranunculus: here. Welcome, Teoh. Less and eight. In the previous lesson, we looked at how to determine whether or not you can pipe flour and what tip you would choose. And also, we've talked about color matching. Now we're going to get into a little bit more of advanced techniques with piped buttercream flowers. The ridiculous is the next step up from everything we've already learned. So we're still looking at color matching and choosing the correct tip. But now to paint on the pedals, which is really cool. And I can't wait to show you you're gonna love this technique. Let's get into it. This is our set up for their in Oculus. I have my reference photo May a parchment squares. I have a bag fitted with a tip 103 And the difference between the one or three and the one on four is the one of three is just a little bit shorter. And I chose he is the 103 for this, because I want to get really smaller, thinner leaves packed in on this flower so it gets to looking more like this really ridiculous. And I actually took a pair of pliers and alter this because when it starts out, you can see that it's wide at one end and send it the other. Well, I don't want that because that's going to be adding a lot of bulk, and I really need to get these thin petals in there. So I just took a pair of pliers and just really carefully, and you have to be careful because it's kind of soft metal. Carefully squeeze it together until I had a really thin even line. I also have my flower, Neil, a little bit of butter, cream and colors. Now I'm going for, like, this fuchsia fusion color here, and it's mainly a bright pain, but I just want a slight tinge of purple to it. So I'm going to start out this about four drops of my kink, and then I'm just going Teoh, jab the blue on the side of my bowl because I want a really a tiny amount. Now just take some of that blue, huh? Yeah, I love that color a little bit more blue, and I think that it will be exactly what I'm going for. That's awesome. Perfect. And I know dark and a little bit from this too. But this is gonna be a really great color to use for our ridiculous. And I'm just going to fill my piping bag with really beautiful fuchsia buttercream. We're ready to paint so again, but on our neo right on there and I'm gonna build a base similar to the Rose. But I want to come out a little bit wider. So I'm actually going Teoh, start with my base like this and then just kind of go in a circle building up to a cone shape. So I have my base and I want that because I can see that I have a really wide sort of pedals down here and then a really small center, and it's kind of high. So I really want to make sure that I'm building the right foundation. Teoh get the pedals to where I need them to go, and that's when you're looking at any type of flower. You really have to look at the structure of it to make a correct decision, and I could see with my ridiculous that in the center there's kind of wavy pedals standing upright, so I want to put a couple of those just to get a really realistic look. And then these wavy pedals kind of extend out a little bit. And then we can start driving are really small pedals, and I don't want to overlap these like the Rose. I want the ends to bought up next to one another, and that's going to help us fit more pedals on here. And every row you point, you want to angle your tip a little bit more so that your pedals air kind of sanding out as the move down the flower, just like it naturally would. And I'm moving a little bit further down. My base means a really short pedals. They're not long and overlapping. As we get closer to the bottom, they really fan out. When you get down here at the very bottom, you can turn your tip out to the side like this. I'm pipe and then that way you can really get that last detailed row in there. That's my ridiculous. You could see we got all those really pretty little pedals in there. Beautiful Pappas onto a cookie sheet in the freezer. It goes, and I've mentioned a few times that these need to go and the freezer reason being, we're going to freeze them so we can add color later. Now comes the really fun part where we get to add more detail and color to this ridiculous . I have my almond extract, and I mentioned previously that you can use any type of clear extract with the alcohol in it, just whatever you prefer in flavor. Almond is my favorite, so if you prefer the no taste vanilla, then use that or the lemon. Use that I have my colors here. I have blue and pink because I'm going to put purple tips and those will go great with the violet and roll kind of tie in together. I have a really find hipped artist's brush and a little dish. I'm gonna start out by putting a little bit of almond extract. You do not need a lot, and I'm actually not going to put my color directly in the extract. I'm gonna put it off to the side, and the reason that you don't want to mix colors directly and put it straight onto the buttercream is because it will be to intensive a color. It'll be so dark. You won't even know what it is. So I'm gonna take a little bit of these and mix them and you can see that this is super intense. You do not need a lot of that color, and you really want to make sure that you are a buttercream. Flower is really solid. It's been in the freezer long enough of its even the least, but soft. It's going to stick to the artist brush and you're gonna have a big mess so you can just start anywhere you want. I'm going to go right here on that edge and add a little bit, and I'm just adding right to the edges and it doesn't go on super smooth, but I like that. I don't want it to go on super smooth. I wanted to look more like a riel renown Keolis. I'm just going to keep adding color. I don't have to add it to all of the pedals. You don't have to try to get every little edge evenly, or I mean you can if you want. If that's what you prefer, it's really up to you. I just love the way it looks when it's really random, and I could smell the almond coming up out of there. And that's just so awesome. I actually put almond flavoring in my buttercream, so it's just gonna mere that and then as the since the alcohol is going to evaporate and then the color will still be there. So I'm happy with that. I think that looks amazing. And that's painting on buttercream. And you could put this back in the freezer to just set up some more before we place them on our cupcakes. Okay, so you've mastered the renown kya list, and you're totally a buttercream flower pro. But I have one more technique to show you in the next lesson with the Camelia. See you there. 10. Camellia: Hey guys, we've made it the last pipe flower, the Camelia. I saved this one for a last because we're adding on one final technique. And this is where we get to use those Fonda tools that you saw earlier. And I'm sure you've been waiting this whole time patiently watching all the other flowers, wondering when ish can use those. Now Let's get started. The Camelia is where it really gets interesting and fun. As you can see, the pedals aren't just rounded like they would be on the roads. The ridiculous. Some of them kind of come to a point or have little tears and cracks in them. And there's definitely color striping and everything on this. So I actually do not color my buttercream. I'm just using white because I'm gonna paint the's pinks on it later after it's frozen. So I have my reference here, and I have the tools that I showed you earlier in the class for fun. It tools. We have our flower nail parchment paper. This bag is fitted with a tip 104 and our cookie sheet. Let's get started piping this. So with the Camelia, it's more fanned out it doesn't come up is high. Therefore, my base isn't going to be as tall. And in the middle of this there's just some little pedals kind of sticks straight up. So I'm just gonna pipe those right in the middle. And then I'm gonna start looking at my picture by piping the first couple around the center kind of cupped over the center handle, too. Three of those. So there's the center of my Camelia, and then the pedals really start to fall outwards. After this and this first row pedals, the second row actually is, like, way under. So I'm really gonna bury my tip into the base and kind of drag. It's along, and I'm actually getting a buildup of buttercream. With that, I can just wipe it off. And then I had my first pedal there, and it's already actually getting some little tears and Jags in it, which I like. We're going to go ahead and overlap a little bit and pipe my second dragging along, taking out some of the buttercream to make it look like they're coming up under the center part here. Then I'll just not overlap this one come in and then this is where we can use our tools. You can use any of these, really. But I like to go in and really get the edges of my buttercream rounded like the pedals and kind of coming to a point. You could see there that that's more like the actual flower we go. We'll take that it off this edge here. So they're the pedals air closer to what this community looks like. Now, the next row. I really want my pedals to be almost flat, laying out kind of like that. And these pedals don't have to be big. They're not really big on the actual flower, so we don't want them to be huge just piping around in rows that my flower kind of felt one side's office pipe more pedals on the one side. Here's my Camelia, and then I'm just still gonna and they can use this other tool as well again around those edges on my pedals to get it to look more like rial power. It's not as full as I would like, so I'm actually gonna go back in, and I'm just white by buttercream on my hand because I'm so used to doing this, That I don't mind. So I'm just gonna add a couple more really small pedals in there, you know, lapping them in amongst the other ones. I'm really happy with that. I think that it looks pretty similar to the photo. So once you get to this point, you can just slide it off copper on your cookie sheets and quite a few. Put him in the freezer for these in the freezer for at least an hour, and then we will add color. Now we hit toe. Add those beautiful pinks to our Camelia. I have the same things that we use in the Rin Oculus, the almond extract artist. Brush a little dish and I'm using a pink and red base color for this. And there I have my chameleon, which has been in the freezer, and it's nice and firm. I just want to drop the red there, one drop of the pink, and it's closer to read. That was on the Camelia, but I just want to add a little bit of pink to it. Teoh kind of tie it into the other flowers that we've already piped, which is really something great to keep in mind. When you're creating flowers for your project, Just how do you want them to look at the end? Do they go together? Tips were really pretty color, super hot pink. And if you just jab it on the side and it runs down, you can really see what color you're getting. So for this, I'm going to just put some of that deep color right on the tips of my center huddles. And then I'm gonna add a little bit of color on the inside here and just go very lightly up the edges of the pedals. And as you use it, more more color will come off. So then your other stripes will be lighter and it'll get that really realistic effect like we saw in the photo. Sometimes it pulls up so you can go back over it to kind of get get a little bit more even looking. Don't just show you here if you put the color directly on there. Obviously it will be extremely dark, but kind of liking that. So I mean ad just the deep red in a couple spots. You could even turn your brush sideways and go up to get more of a large swath across the pedals. A little bit of butter cream comes onto your brush. That's OK. You can just kind of wipe it off into your dish there, remember? Really light touch. We don't wanna damage our flower that we took all that time to pipe some more. Just the red to get some of those really deep lines. Can I go? I'm not gonna mess with it anymore. I think that looks really beautiful. Very beautiful. Way to go. You've made it to the end of the pipe buttercream flowers. In the next last time, we're gonna talk about fillers such as buds and leaves, and we're gonna get to our project. We're gonna put everything we learn together and make some really beautiful cupcakes. I'll see you in the next lesson. 11. Fillers and Project: Hey there, cake enthusiasts. Welcome toe Lesson 10 this. Listen, we're gonna talk about fillers. It's one thing to pipe awesome buttercream flowers. It's another thing to just kind of throw him willy nilly on a cake. It's not really how I like to do it, So I'm gonna show you two types of leaves that I really love to use and a beautiful, But that looks really realistic. And finally, we're gonna put it all together and top off our cupcakes. Let's get started. You've learned how to pipe gorgeous buttercream flowers and how to get really creative and choose flowers for yourself, ones that you haven't even learned in this class. And now we're going to look at filling in around those flowers, grouping them together, making them look really nice and really realistic. By adding leaves and buds, we're going to look at a rose leaf, and also I want to show you the raspberry leaf because it's a similar shape to the rose. However, it has more of a ruffle to it, which is really nice, and I also want to take a look at buds. Buds are just flowers before they've bloomed. There's a Camelia bud. So we're gonna look at the tips that you need. Teoh create these buds and leaves and then look out how to group flowers together and fill it all in. By now, you should be a pro at color matching. So I'm not gonna show you how I colored the green. But I will tell you that I used blue, yellow and a little bit of black to get a darker hunter green. And that's why we're gonna be using for the bud. So I put that in this bag and fitted it with the Wilton Tip 3 52 And this is the buttercream that I had for the Camelia. And I just switched out the tip to a Wilton tip 12 and for the buds. I like to pipe them onto parchment and freeze them as well, because I treat them like there another flower and we have our flower nail here. Someone start by using the white with the round hit. Then we'll just put dot on there and for the bud. The reason that I'm using a different color for the center is because as before they bloom , you can kind of see peeking out a little bit of the color of what the flowers went be first , I'm going. Teoh, just pipe a small cone. We really don't want it to be large. Ah, but the relatively small and they were gonna take our green. And we're holding this perpendicular to our flower now because we want to pipe up the side . So I'm just going to apply pressure and let it build out a little bit of a base and pipe up and you don't want these toe overlap. But you also don't want there to be space in between. You're going to want it. Teoh. Peek out the top, but not out the sides. Sometimes I just take the tip and use it. Teoh Curlin. Any of these top edges that might be sticking out, and there's a really nice flower, bud. As always, take us right off your flower nail, and these can go right in the freezer and will place them on the cupcakes with the rest of the flowers. Piping leaves can be really simple if you just use a woman leaf tip, which is the 3 52 but I like to get ones that look a little more realistic. So I use a tip 104 I've already colored buttercream, and this is a little bit lighter than the shade we previously used Just to have a little bit of variation. When we group everything together, really give the flower arrangement more depth. Go ahead and piper dot on your flower now and attach your parchment paper. And for this, I'm going to show you how to dio just a really simple flat leaf. We're going to start by making sure that that wide end is pointing towards you and the narrow and is pointing away from you so kind of make a visual center line just imaginary, and we're gonna pipe too Parts one on each side. So we're going to start here and make sure that point is up here cause that's gonna be the very point of our leaf. So start applying pressure and then pull straight down in turn, pull away. And that's the first side of our leaf. Now to do the other side, I'm actually going to flip this over, and then I'm going to flip my tip over. So now that that narrow and is facing towards me and I'm gonna start here and I'm just gonna dio that motion backwards. There you have a really nice leaf and it's pretty realistic because the edges are broken up . There's a little bit of variation and it really looks like there's, ah, center vein in that leaf and you can freeze these and will place them on the cupcakes. The other leaf that I want to show you has a lot more texture to it. So we're using the same motion and direction, and we're using the same direction. But we're going to be using a different motion. So start here with the narrow and facing away from you white and facing towards you again. Apply pressure pulled down and then wiggle it and you get a lot more of a Ribble in it. Now we're gonna do the other side narrow and facing towards you white in fencing away and we're doing the opposite. And there you have a really pretty rippled leaf on. This looks exactly like a raspberry leaf. So this is gonna be great to go with our raspberries on our cupcakes. You may have the best part, which is our project here are already prepared some chocolate cupcakes. I just have to hear that I'm gonna show you if you want to use my chocolate cupcake recipe . I've provided that as a resource on on the project page, but you're welcome to bake your favorite flavor of cupcake. I also have my array of flowers that we've already made. And I kept my bag fitted with 3 50 to tip, which is the leaf tip with the green in it. And this is just going to kind of glue are flowers onto our cupcakes. They don't move around or fall off. Remember, all of these buttercream flowers are frozen. The really nice thing to about freezing them is that you can make them a few days ahead of time and they just keep. And the reason that we freeze them is because there they become very easy to just peel off the paper and apply directly to our cupcakes or whatever project you're working on. It's also good to have a towel handy because this congee get a little bit messy. So for this, I'm just going to start by piping leaves around the edge of my cupcake because I'm making a floral arrangement so I just I want to make it look more cohesive and cover up the edges that flowers might not cover up. And then for the center, just make sure there's buttercream on there as glue. I'm going to start with one of my chameleons, and here you can see you just que it off and it goes right on. It's a little bit messy. Used to just wipe your hand off, and this is gonna be for other people to eat. I do recommend wearing some gloves. Now that takes up a large trunk of our cupcake. So I'm gonna add smaller flowers. That was a little melty, smaller flowers and you can have them at an angle. You can overlap flowers. They don't have to be sitting flat on your surface. Here, I have a raspberry. We'll just put one of those on the air. If you find your flowers are getting really soft, you can just pop them back in the freezer. And typically I like to have my cupcakes already ready with the buttercream on them and then pull my flowers out. So I have those Alan C. I'm gonna take this, but I'm gonna put that right there that lives in nicely. And then we'll take one of our leaves that we just piped. And then we can take one of our leaves and kind of put it at an angle like it's coming out from behind one of the flowers. I'm just going Teoh pipe a couple more leaves to fill in and Mary half you're cupcake bouquet. We can just dio Another one will try one without the leaves pipe from EJ. Just put green on there and maybe I will make a cluster of these roses pop my raspberries, those empty spaces. And I think I want to put a couple of violence and you can really pile them up. They don't have to be side by side like I mentioned, you can just fit them in wherever that I like to really make sure that it's all filled in. Here we go on the cake. So, as you can see, you can arrange these flowers in any way that you like really get creative. Use different colors, different sizes, different textures. And you can always pipe mawr these leaves. If you like that look on just kind of put those around the edges. It's really up to you. I look forward to seeing your projects in the projects page 12. Thanks: congratulations. You made it to the end of this course. I hope you learned a lot and you're gonna put these techniques into action. If you have any questions about anything we learned, please don't hesitate to ask. I've provided a lot of resource is for you on the project page. You can click on them, they're pdf format, and you could print them off or just save them to your computer. I really hope you try out the project and pipe some of the flowers that we learned in class . You don't just have to share the finished project. You can also share your steps along the way. The Mao A. It really encourages other students to get started and start practicing. If you enjoy the class, don't forget to like it. It really helps. Other students in the skill share community know whether or not a class is worth taking. So if you thought that there was a lot of great information and you really enjoyed it, please give it a thumbs up. You can also follow me that way. When I post a new class, you'll get notified immediately by email and you can roll right away I'll be posting a lot of classes on techniques and cake decorating from really beginner all the way to advanced. And I hope to see you in those classes. Thanks so much for taking this class. I really look forward to seeing your projects and giving you feedback until next time.