If there is one overriding motif that is shared by most cakes it is flowers. What would cakes be without flowers? The floral motif in pastries, especially cakes, can be traced back to the very beginning of ornately designed desserts. Flowers are indeed appropriate for almost every kind of pastry and cake. Here are some tips for making your own beautiful cake creation shine and glimmer with a floral motif.

Bring Your Cake to Life with Drop Flowers

What are drop flowers? Drop flowers are the basic, small flowers that you often see on cake borders. They are created using a basic star tip. To make drop flowers, simply touch the tip of your pastry bag against the surface of the cake, squeeze gently, cease the pressure, and then lift the tip straight up. It is really as simple as that. For a more complicated “swirled flower,” simply give the bag a little quarter twist as you squeeze out the icing, and then lift straight up. Drop flowers are easy to do, and give off a beautiful pattern.

Adding Flowers to the Center of Your Cake

How about adding some flowers to the very heart of your cake? To do this, simply use a round tip to your pastry bag. Then drop just a small dot of icing to the inside of the flower. You can also fashion your own design, such as doing three dots, and then drawing a small circle around the dots.

Make Your Cake Sweet and Rosy

There is no better way to decorate a cake than with roses. Roses are classic and elegant, and they never go out of style. Here are some tips on adding roses to your cake. You will need to have “flower nails” in order to use this technique. First, hold the flower nail by the stem of your left hand. Make sure to hold it between your thumb and fingertips. Next, use a round tip (a number 12 works well) to construct a small icing mound in the center of the flower nail. Make it look roughly like a Hershey’s kiss. At this point, you will want to switch to a rose tip. Begin by applying petals to your rose. Then touch the tip holding the wide end down. Squeeze out a bit of icing to make a small arch that loops from one side of the mound. Turn the nail as you apply the icing to achieve this effect. To finish the effect, add two more overlapping arches around the mound.

Everything’s Coming Up Roses - Adding More Rows of Roses

Continue by making a row of roses. Here are some tips for getting into your cake decorating groove. For the second row, try tilting the tip out ever slightly. This time, apply more petals, adding up to five slightly overlapping petals on the row. For the third row, tilt the tip even more and add seven overlapping petals. This can create a very nice effect. You will want to snip off your rose from the nail with a pair of kitchen scissors. Next slide the rose and place it on the cake surface.

Get Creative With Your Flowers

There is a very easy way to get creative with your flowers. You can tint the hue of your flowers by using a small paintbrush in the kind of paste color you want. To get a neat effect, draw a stripe up the inside of your pastry bag from the point to halfway up the pastry bag, and the fill in the bag with your regular icing. This is called bag striping and it can create a very nice effect on how your flowers look.