Transcripts
1. Sunflower Introduction: Hi everyone. My name is Katie, and I'm the owner
of Totally Baked. My videos are a
range of beginner decorating skills to much
more intermediate flowers. This means that you
can follow along no matter where you are
in your baking journey. To receive my free
buttercream recipe, all you need to do
is follow the link below and subscribe
to my email list, and you'll be able to receive some exclusive discounts to my blondie and brownie guides. So today's flower
that we're going to pipe is this
beautiful sunflower. A lot of people do sunflowers
in a lot of different ways. I've decided to go for a
longer petal and then put in that detail into the center. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope to see
you very, very soon.
2. General Equipment: Creating buttercream
flowers, there is a usual equipment
list that is needed. This includes bowls. I tend to use smaller bowls
to create flowers because you don't need masses of
buttercream. Pipe and bags. These are really, really thick. And they're really durable. You do not want thin pipe and bags when you're
creating flowers. Butterknives, or palette knives. And again, you want
these to be thin. It doesn't necessarily
matter which one you are using as long as you can get a small amount of buttercream down your
pipe and bag with it. Spoons or, again, you can
use larger palette knives. And then you'll need scissors
to cut your pipe in bag. Of course, you'll
need buttercream. This was made a
couple of days ago. It was wrapped up,
kept in the fridge, and it is now at a really
nice room temperature. Bearing in mind, I am in England and my room temperature
was about 16 degrees. So if you are in
a hotter country, you may want to keep it
in the fridge for longer.
3. Tips: Piping tips we're going to
use to create our sunflower. The Wilton number two. That is a standard
circular nozzle. We are going to use another
Wilton tip and number 14, which is just a very,
very small star shaped. We are going to. Create our
petals using a GG one oh six.
4. Creating Colours: Only using two colors today. This is going to be the vast
majority of our petals. This is going to be
the vast majority of the inside part
of the sunflower. Okay, so I've got
my buttercream for my flower petals and
my inner petals here. So this is going to be my brown. This is going to be my yellow. And then I'm going to
use two smaller bulls. And these are going to be for my different toned coloring. To begin, I am going to use my gorgeous egg
yellow by sugar flower. What I'm going to do is get a spoon and I'm
actually just going to take a couple of
lumps out of this. This will be the
base. This will be the majority of our petals. And I'm going to get my spatula, and I'm going to take, first of all,
probably a bit less than that because the
thing is with colouring, is you can always add more, but you cannot take it away. So I'm going to just go
for that little amount. This is really, really pigmented
stuff, as you can tell, just from the color of
the actual gel itself. And then I'm going to stir. Now, as you can see, we're
not at the desired sort of yellow that we want
from our sunflower. This will deepen over time, but I already know that it's not going to get to that
sort of coloring. However, that's
absolutely fine because I can just add a
little bit more. Now, if I had put too much in, I would have to use more
buttercream to level it out and all that's going to do
is waste my buttercream. Use them a bit more this time. Giving it a good stir. If you don't have this egg yellow color and you're not
interested in buying it, very easily use an orange and a yellow classic color and
then blend them together. Gradually. Oh, I'm sorry
if I'm out of breath. I um, 27 weeks pregnant and getting more and more
out of breath by the day. So while I'm stirring, I'm
actually pushing my air out. And this is just a great
way to stir because really, we don't want any excess
air in our buttercream. Okay, we're getting to a nice
sort of sunflower yellow. Right, so this is going to be the vast majority of our petal. It's quite a nice,
subtle yellow. However, we do want
to tone our yellow. So using the excess, you're going to split
this up into two parts. Now, if you want to use
another bowl, go for it. I'm just being a bit of a
washing up phobe today. I'm going to try
and use one bowl. So make my lighter shade. I'm just going to use
a bit of this yellow, and I'm going to mix
it into my cream, butter cream that
I've already got. So nice. You can see it's just a
slightly lifted version. Okay, you won't
use a lot of this. But it will create a
nice bit of depth. For my second coloring, I'm going to use
quite a decent amount of this on the other side. And this is actually
going to create that really nice depth
that you see when you have a sunflower. And if they get a
little bit mixed up, it's fine because they're going to go into the
same pipe and bag. Anyway, you need to
make sure you get the bottom that could
look really orange, and then you realize there's
loads at the bottom. Like, so I'm going
to keep going. I'm gonna go in a
spoon, I think. So this is why it might be
easier to get another bowl. But because I'm just
really over washing up. Being 26 27 weeks pregnant, washing up is just
not on my agenda. Current. But look at that. That's just such a
beautiful color. So we've got our
darker orange here, which is really, really,
really stunning. We've got our medium sort of
orange, more of a yellow. Here so you can
see the comparison and then our third shade there. Before these go into
our piping bag, I am going to mix up my brown. Okay, so our brown is going
to be a lot more pigmented. However, you don't need to use anywhere near as
much butter cream. So I'm going to get
a decent amount because I do want it
to be dark brown. I'm going to smush
that in there. And this I'm actually
going to keep to one side. Got color in on, and I'm going to keep it to
one side for now. So push in again, same sort of technique, pushing my ice in into
the color because we want all those air
bubbles to be removed. Put that against our
egg yellow. Lovely. Now, you might be
able to remember. I kept a little bit
on my palette knife, and I'm actually going to use
that just in the corner of my yellow mixing it between the lighter
and the darker shade. It doesn't matter if you
get it in a little bit, you actually want them
all to be slightly blended and to be
slightly the same color. Okay. I think that is lovely. Here are all of my
gorgeous sunflower shades.
5. Piping bags: The first step to any
buttercream flour is flat using your cupcake. I use frozen cupcakes, and the reason for this is because as soon as
they are cooked, they are so lovely and moist
and soft and just beautiful. And if you freeze them, that would lock in
all of that moisture. If you're not freezing
your cupcakes, you need to be icing
them the next day, the same day, really, and you need to get them
out within two days. I'm going to use my icing that I've already created to
flat ice my cupcake. I'm just going to. The pipe
and it are going to start. Use a spatula doesn't need to be Whatever color you
want to do it with, I would recommend that it's a color that you've
got on your cupcake, because if there's
any sort of showing, then it's already the same
color so it doesn't stand out. I'm just going to go round and really does not need to be. That's my first step. My second step is to
create my pipe and bag. Now, I'm going to use two pipe and bags to start off with. The pipe and tip
we're going to start with today is our GG one oh six. Now, I have just had
a little play around, and I've actually cut the end of my pipe and bag already and actually put some
yellow in there. But this just shows that you can reuse a pipe and
bag if you need to. I have a lot of
questions like that. Can I reuse a pipe bag? How have you done that? You
don't need to fill it up to the top and get everything out of it straight
away. You can reuse it. So I'm just going to
plot my tip back down. You wouldn't usually
take the tip out, but I just did it for
the sake of this video. This lighter shade here is going to be running
along the edge. I'll just put on the
complete wrong side. I'm going to scrape
that off, 'cause I put that on the
complete wrong side. Okay, I want it running along
this pointed edge here. So in it goes and push it down. I'm going to use a tiny
bit more than that. And I'm putting it in,
and I'm literally just pushing it down with
my palette knife. Okay, doesn't need
to be a lot at all. I'm going to scrape this off. And next, I'm going to go
in with my mass color. This is actually going
to be a bit more, and I'm going to get
a decent amount. You can use a spoon, you can use a knife, you can use
anything really, and I'm going to run it along the edge of my lighter color. I want to try and
avoid this end here. If you get it on
there, it's absolutely fine like I just
showed you before. You can move it, you
can get rid of it. I'm pushing it in.
You don't want loads. You don't want not enough. You just sort of need
a decent amount. Okay. And then I'm actually
just going to use that palette knife
just to push it in and make sure that all of my colors are in
the right place. For my third section
of coloring, I'm going to go in
my darker orange. And I don't really want too
much of that brown in there, but a little bit. So I'm scraping a
bit of that like so. And this is going to
go longt a third time. So my bag at the
moment, has a lighter, a medium, a darker. I'm going to get a bit more of that because this is actually
what creates our depth. And the last but not least section is just
going to be a really, really small amount
of this brown. And the reason we're only
going for a little tiny bit of the brown is because it
will show up the most. And what I'm going to actually
do is turn my bag around, and I'm going to run it along the edge of the
other side. Like so. Like I said, it's
tiny, tiny, tiny. Maybe a little bit more
just to even it out, but you really don't want a lot. Okay. Moving that bowl away. I'm going to literally
get my hands and push all of those colors
all the way down, removing these air bubbles
as much as possible. Just like so. Then with my bag, I'm going to give
it a good twist so twisted that it
starts to come out. When it does come
out, that's fine because you can just
give it a little test on a palette knife
and I can see I've got light at one end and
it gets darker as it goes, this will be more
evident as we pipe. Our brown piping bag is going
to be slightly different. We're going to use a coupler. And what this does is allows you to chop and change through different tips as
you go through your. So I'm going to
pop that in there. Making sure that it goes
down and using my scissors, I'm just going to create a little alco where
I want it to be cut. I want it to be cut just
above this little bit here, push that off and snip, and then I can just check. Perfect. I'm actually going to start off brown
that I'm going to use is the darker brown
that we created earlier. In and just go to sit on top. If you want to use two
different piping bags, you can, of course, but I just find
that it's so time consuming. These are expensive.
They're not cheap. So this is just a great way. And you can tighten that up. The first tip I'm going to
use is my star tip here. And you know when a
sunflower has that really, like ruffled beautiful edge, that's what that's going to do. In that goes, twist,
twist, twist.
6. Sunflower Creation: Today's flower that
we're going to pipe is this beautiful sunflower. A lot of people do sunflowers
in a lot of different ways. I've decided to go for a
longer petal and then put in that detail into the center. I'm going to use a
Russian piping nozzle to create a bit of a
map now so we need to find the exact
center of our cupcake. I'm not going to press it down until I've really
looked head on. So I think that is about there. I'm gonna give it a press. It doesn't need to be too much. All you're doing
is making a dent. And there we go,
got a nice circle. This just gives us
a map for where our piping nozzle needs to go. Using my piping bag, I'm just going to make sure
all of those colors that I've put in there were
all squeezed down. Because I've got some
darker shades of yellow. I've got some of
my medium shade, and then here I've got
a nice lighter shade. I'm going to tighten tighten, tighten tighten until I can't
tighten anymore, basically. To create our sunflower, we're going to use a motion that is a straight
up, straight down. So you go straight up,
slightly, slightly, jolt your hand and then go down, but really, really,
really slightly. I'm not going to touch this
I'm not going to press in. I'm just going to lightly, but my nozzle there, and I'm literally going
straight up and down. So I'll do one on the
side just so you can see my bag is really,
really tight. My point my pointed end is at the top and my longer
end is at the bottom. Okay. Usually, I do
this leaning down here. It's going to move that out
the way so I don't ruin it. So I'm going straight
up and down. From the front, it
creates a bit of an angled petal, as you can see. I'm going to do that
again, following the circle that I've
created up and down. That one didn't quite go right. That's fine because we're
actually going you can either take it off using
your tip like that. Put it in a bowl or you
could just leave it. I'm going to go
again up and down. And that just is the importance of really concentrating,
having you bag tight. I'm going to go again. I can see I've slightly gone in there, and I don't want that,
so I need to make sure. I'm not doing that, so
up and down up and down. And with the right pressure, your flowers will begin to
form a really beautiful petal. I gonna wipe my pipe and tip it is being a
little bit funny. And I'm going to tighten again. I'm just going to not
talk for a minute. So I'm going straight
up, straight down. And As you can see, my flowers come out much, much better and I'm not talking. So I'm going to push this
down, tighten it again. I'm going to do the next layer. I was exactly the same. Apart from this time,
I'm just going to start in those crevices, and I'm going to do a slightly less a slightly smaller
petal this time. And But still doing that
up and down motion. They will look a
bit more squish, which is kind of what we want. They also have a nice
amount of depth in there. The color is beautiful. Up. I've got a few more to go. Maybe one. No, I
think that's enough. Like so. Maybe one more. Yeah, I'll do one more. Okay. So there we
have our petals. The next thing we want to do is create a bit of a map
inside this hole now, which will just tell us where
to pipe our in a circle. So I'm just going to use
this Wilton number one. I'm going to just gently place it in where I think
is the center. I'm going to just
move that slightly. There. And then again, just really gently push it down. Like so. And as you can see, the space around
the outer circle is a little bit different. It's a little bit uneven, but that's fine because we're
going to fill that in now. I'm going to use
my Wilton 14 tip the startup that I
showed you earlier. I'm going to tighten up my
bag with my dark brown in. I'm actually going to go
just around that line. And I'm going to squeeze
gently and lift up. I'm not squeezing too much. I'm not making too
much of a shape. I'm almost budging
that yellow out the way because I want it to, I don't want that to
be happening, though, so I'm going to just wipe that cause I want this
to really be even. Okay. I'm going all
the way around. And if you feel like
that's a bit flatter, I might just go over that. Because what you want from
this is almost like, you know, that fluffy middle
that sunflowers got. That's what we're creating here. So you can go over
it again if you want to if you feel like it
needs a bit more depth. The thing is these flowers, these petals are
so beautiful that you can actually
lose the inside. And with the same bag,
I'm going to get rid of the Wilton 14. I'm going to pop on
my Wilton number one. Again, just make sure
that it's really, really tight until it starts
to come out, wipe that off. And with this, you are going
to create some circles. You want these to look
really nice and neat. So take your time just nice pressure on
your pipe and bag. Like so. There we have
our beautiful sunflower. You can see here
the two have got slightly different toned leaves, but I think they both
are absolutely stunning.
Katie Louise Smith, Baker and Teacher
