Russian Flower Frosting Tips

Have you been seeing the Russian Flower tips all over the place recently?   Let me tell you my cake decorating skills will never win awards. Yes, I can bake a great tasting cake but I've never been much on decorating them.  Slather the frosting on with a butter knife and I call it good. So I debated long and hard about these tips and finally ordered a set.  I was originally just going to purchase a small set of 7 but then I found another set that suited me more...in addition to the flower tips it also had a couple leaf tips and the bags to go with it. Since I have 0 experience with decorating a cake/cupcake I wasn't sure if it was a good idea or not but I figured what the heck...I'd give it a try.  I figured I'd treat it like art and pretend I was using gesso or Creative Medium - LOL!!

Amazon Russian Tip Set

So, next was finding a recipe to make some nice buttercream frosting. I used this one....Wedding Cupcake Buttercream from Recipe Girl. It seemed pretty fail safe and since I'm not a great baker I wanted to go with easy ;)  LOL!!  

I made a double batch because I wasn't sure how much it would make and I've read/heard that these tips use lots of frosting.  It turned out WONDERFUL - so yummy best frosting I've ever made...well, except for the Pistachio Whip Cream frosting but that's a whole nother beast - not suitable for piping.

I decided to go for the gold on my first shot and mixed up several colors.

In all of the videos and stuff they tell you how to layer the frostings on cling wrap then roll it up. I forgot to take a pic of this laid out but let me tell you, OBVIOUSLY those people in the videos were experienced with this. It is NOT easy to spread the frosting out and hold onto the (@*%( cling wrap to keep it from sliding all over the counter. I think the next time I'm going to use my ATG and tape the stuff down.   Anyway, they tell you to apply the outside layer first, next either add a secondary color spread almost to the edges of the first then add the center color right down the center (like a log) then roll it up.  I almost got it right - you can see a bit of pink peeking out but that's o.k....

Next you snip off one of the twirled ends and slide it in the bag down to the tip. 

I frosted the cupcakes with a tiny amount of plain frosting to give the piped frosting something to hold on to. Some of the videos I watched didn't do this and they had trouble pulling the bag away without the flower coming along with it so I figured this step didn't take long and was worth the effort - like adding a layer of gesso prior to a mixed media or collage project.

And here is my first attempt!  Seriously, this is fun - you can see though that they are all different heights. I'm not gonna lie, it takes some practice to know how much you need to squeeze the bag of frosting. I've never piped anything in my life so this was an adventure - LOL!!

I got through 5 cupcakes really well before my frosting got too warm...

Then came this one. Maybe I wasn't holding the bag right or maybe I'm just one hot mamma - the last of the frosting that was in the bag was melting. It made the petals just fold in on themselves.

THEN I added the leaves!!!  I am so stinkin' impressed with myself. For someone who has never piped anything in their life I think they turned out pretty darn good!

This is the second batch I made...it was supposed to be dark blue, light blue then a mix in the center but the blues were too close in color that it really doesn't show up well.  This does give you an idea on how I layered the colors though.

And here's how these ones turned out.  I used a different tip and it didn't take as much frosting as the first tip did. I ended up with 9 of those.

I had a bit of leftover frosting so I just messed around making the orange ones and then I did a couple full of leaves with the green.  I have to say that I am really amazed at how easy it was and they actually turned out looking like flowers! So, for all of you out there wondering these tips really do work.