Piping out a carnation with buttercream frosting is not only easy, but it is fun!

How to Pipe a Buttercream Carnation! (video)

I kinda stumbled on this technique as I was playing around today. I did it, then sat back and thought, “What flower is that?” A carnation immediately came to mind. Upon looking up pictures of carnations, I realized that I had inadvertently created the easiest (and of course, delicious) buttercream carnation ever. (I am not claiming I invented this technique, just that I stumbled upon it while playing around with buttercream. I am sure many others have done it before me, and probably did it much better!!)

How to Pipe a Buttercream Carnation! (video)

Once I got started I just couldn’t stop. It was so fun and quite possibly the easiest of all the flowers to execute.

Here is a little video:

Thank you so much for your patience with these videos. I do everything by myself… from decorating to pushing the ‘record’ button to editing (gah, editing is not easy!) and a lot of my videos are not as clean and bright as I would like. So I really appreciate your patience and understanding and willingness to still come along on the journey with me!

How to Pipe a Buttercream Carnation! (video)

I used a #104 tip for all the carnations.

If you want to achieve a multi-toned effect (pink and white for instance), simply add a bit of pink to your pastry bag fitted with #104 tip. Try to get the pink frosting to stay along one side. Fill remainder of bag with white frosting.

You can pipe this directly onto cupcakes (or cookies!) or you can pipe the flowers on a the pastry nail. Gently remove from nail and then freeze. When all flowers are chilled they can be added to a cake! (Like this Spring Flower Cake)

I used this whipped buttercream recipe, but you can use almost any frosting that can hold it’s shape.

This technique is quite forgiving. You can start and stop as often as you need to. It is almost impossible to mess up!

Check out my other buttercream video tutorials:

How to Pipe a Tall Fluffy Buttercream Flower

How to Pipe a Buttercream Daisy

How to Pipe Cookie Monster

How to Pipe Oscar the Grouch

How to Pipe a Cake with a Grass Tip

Share with your friends!

Categorized in:

Related Recipes

Meet Amanda Rettke

Amanda Rettke is the creator of I Am Baker, and the bestselling author of Surprise Inside Cakes: Amazing Cakes for Every Occasion – With a Little Something Extra Inside.Over the course of her 15+ year blogging adventure, she has been featured in and collaborated with the Food Network, New York Times, LA Times, Country Living Magazine, People Magazine, Epicurious, Brides, Romantic Homes, life:beautiful, Publishers Weekly, The Daily Mail, Star Tribune, The Globe and Mail, DailyCandy, YumSugar, The Knot, The Kitchn, and Parade, to name a few.

Reader Comments

  1. I’m loving all these buttercream flowers. I need to open up my wilton book full of flower tutorials and get back into it!

  2. Thank you so much for being willing to share your knowledge! I am loving the video tutorials. 🙂

  3. These videos are awesome! I’ve learned so much from your blog and love playing around with different cake decorating techniques. Thank you for taking the time to show us how to do it!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.