frosting cupcakes

If you love baking, this handy Cupcake Frosting Guide will assist you in creating amazing color and flavor combinations.

In order to achieve the various effects, you will need icing tips and a piping bag. You can even use a ziplock bag with the end snipped off. It’s that simple. You’re then ready for action.

Here’s a very handy Frosting Flavor Guide that shows you how to mix the desired colors. Food Network suggests that you mix a cup of frosting with the recommended number of food coloring drops.

You can mix all of these colors using standard red, yellow, blue and green food coloring. It’s a literal rainbow of colors.

This Cupcake Flavor Chart from McCormick shows you the color and flavor guides. It also lists the quantities that you will need to use. Be sure to Pin as it will come in very handy.

Over on She Knows they have compiled this very handy infographic that gives some delicious recipes and flavors that sound heavenly.

You can select from Red Velvet, Mocha, Pistachio, Peanut Butter, Peppermint and Coconut Cream to name a few.

Ziploc have provided this Frosting and Flavour Guide – They suggest 8oz of White Frosting and food coloring.

Another tip they recommend is to add a tip to the bag. Simply fold over the top of the bag, cut off the corner, and place the tip inside for extra precision and swirly fanciness!

Now that you are familiar with your flavors, let’s look at the tips and effects that you can achieve. This Piping Tip Guide from Gygi is a great place to start. You can achieve flowers, stars, round swirls and many more of the popular effects. The full article is here

One of our favorite decorating sites is Glorious Treats. They make all sorts of wonderful desserts and they have a whole article that explains simple frosting techniques like those displayed above.

You can find all the details here

Ever wonder what Tip you should be using? This very handy chart from It’s a Baking Thing leaves you in no doubt which nozzle is required. You can read the article here.

Here are some great ways to decorate cupcakes from Wilton. Be sure that you check out our best buttercream post here.

Learn to prepare your piping bag, the easiest way to fill your bag, and how to frost cupcakes like a pro with this easy tutorial!

I’ll never forget the first time I decided to try and pipe frosting on cupcakes.  I had been baking for a while and felt pretty comfortable in the kitchen, so I decided to bake a batch of cupcakes to take to work.  I went to the store and picked up some piping bags, an inexpensive tip, and went home to start baking.

I prepped my piping bag, filled it with some frosting, and started to decorate my cupcakes.  It was in that moment that I realized decorating cupcakes isn’t the easiest thing to do when you don’t really know what you’re doing.  I’ll be honest too, they didn’t look very pretty.

After that experience, I experimented and tested different ways to pipe frosting until I found the best way to decorate cupcakes. The techniques that I’m sharing today are incredibly easy and they always turns out perfect!  No more lopsided or awkward looking frosting, just a perfect swirl of beautiful buttercream on top of your cupcakes.

Want to learn the tricks?  I’ve put together an easy to follow tutorial for how to pipe a beautiful tall bakery style swirl (pictured above) and a rose on your cupcakes. I chose these because they’re easy, they use the same piping tip, and it’s two of my favorite ways to decorate cupcakes!

So, let’s get started!

So first things first, you want to prep your piping bag.  You can either use a reusable piping bag or disposable piping bags, both work great!  I prefer to use disposable piping bags, but feel free to use whichever you prefer.

Secondly, you’ll need a piping tip.  A few of my favorite tips are the Wilton 1M, Wilton 2D, and the Wilton 2A (round piping tip).  You can usually find these tips at places like Walmart or Michaels for $1-$2 each.  I really love the Wilton 1M tip, which is what I’m using in this tutorial.

You’ll cut the end of your bag off and insert the tip down into the bag as pictured above.

Then, you want to fill the bag with your frosting.  I prefer to make my own buttercream frosting because I think store-bought frosting is way too sweet and honestly, it doesn’t taste very good.  Here’s my full tutorial for how to make your own buttercream frosting.

I’ve found that the easiest way to fill a piping bag is to place the bag in a large cup and fold the edges of the bag over the sides of the cup.  Then, fill the bag with your frosting and lift it out of the cup.  At this point would want to squeeze the frosting down to the bottom of the bag and then either twist the top of the bag or use a tie to prevent it from coming out of the top when you squeeze it.

Before we get started on this part, here’s the most important thing to remember when you’re piping frosting: apply even pressure the whole time.

Okay here’s my little trick to getting the perfect swirl, start by piping a large dot in the center of your cupcake.  You’ll use that dot as a starting point and it also helps make sure your frosting stays perfectly centered.  Once you’ve made the dot, stop squeezing the bag, and move your bag to a spot outside of the dot.  I like to start at the 3 o’clock position (I’m facing the other way in this picture), but try different spots and see where you feel most comfortable.

Then, start squeezing the bag again and pipe a large circle around the dot.

Once you’ve piped the larger circle, start making smaller circles on top of each other until you reach the top.  Once you’re at the top, release pressure, very gently press down a little (so the last bit of frosting stays put), and lift the bag away.

Easy, right?  This method works perfect with any kind of tip.  Here’s what the finished product will look like, this picture is actually with the Wilton 2D tip.

Now, let’s move on to how to pipe a rose on your cupcake.

This method is actually super easy, in fact, I think it’s easier than the swirl we just did!  I used my Wilton 1M tip for this as well.

You’ll start out by using the same method, piping a dot in the center of your cupcake.  However, you won’t stop squeezing the bag, you’ll just continue piping circles around that dot until you’ve covered the top of the cupcake.

Once you get to the edge and can’t pipe any more frosting, release pressure from the bag, and lift it away.

Even easier, right?

Here’s a better picture of what the finished product will look like once you’re done.  You can also add some food coloring to the frosting and create different colors as well.

It sounds a little cliche, but practice makes perfect when it comes to decorating cupcakes.  I suggest using a piece of parchment paper or even a plate to practice on before you actually frost your cupcakes.  Once you feel like you’ve got it down, scoop the frosting off the parchment paper or plate right back into your bag, and get started!

Here’s a few of my favorite cupcake recipes for you to try out:

Again, here’s my full tutorial for how to make your own buttercream frosting.  There’s also directions in the post for how to make vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, or caramel frosting.  Here’s a few others to try as well:

Hopefully this post will help you to feel a little more confident when it comes to decorating cupcakes.  If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments!  Trust me when I say that if I can learn how to frost cupcakes, you can too.

Frosting cupcakes 101 – are you guys as pumped as I am to be talking cupcakes?! I’m so excited to be finally talking about frosting cupcakes today, but not just because cupcakes are my fav to bake/decorate. Also because the topic has been at the top of my most asked questions list for like ever. I haven’t covered this yet because I really struggled on how to share this information with you guys. It’s kind of a thing you have to see to understand. Once I came up with a game plan I  needed a day that the hubs was home to help out on a little photography but having him home during the day with occupied kiddos proved completely impossible. So this week I finally just decided to tackle the project by myself…

… Since piping and photographing at the same time is just about impossible without a third arm, I went with plan B, videoing, *gulp* the process. I’m so not a fan of being videoed. Something about hearing your own voice… creepy! Then I found out I am not very good at explaining while piping. They aren’t perfect…but I think they will do!

Just to clarify, there are lots of different way to accomplish a beautiful frosted cupcake. This is just my way, which works for me! :)

As for the icing… I use lots of different icings to frost cupcakes depending on what I need exactly, but today I’m using my regular decorators buttercream. You can read all about decorators buttercream in my posthere. I can flavor it to almost any flavor I want, and it’s perfect when I need it to look a certain way too. But before we get to piping… let’s talk about the tools used to get there!

Most of my piping tools are Wilton brand. As I’ve said many times before, I love using Wilton tools because they work so well, they’re easy to obtain, and friendly on my always stretching baking funds. You can find them at most of your local craft stores and baking sections. Here are some of the tools I use:

Piping bags: I really love using the heavy decorating bags but because I decorate SO often and need so many I always have a pack of the disposable bags hanging around. I’ve even learned to wash and reuse them! But if I need to, i can just toss them out.

Icing bag ties: These guys aren’t always a must have, but they are really helpful when learning to pipe. Especially when working with a very thin consistency like royal icing.

Couplers – Couplers are tips to put in your piping bag that allow you to switch out the tips. When your working with the same color but different techniques these are so helpful less bags to clean = happy me. They come in large and small, since I used large tips to decorate cupcakes I’m using me large coupler here.

Now for the most important part… the tip! There are so many different tips available, then countless ways of using each tip. However, these are just about the only tips I ever use when frosting a cupcake. The first four I would consider large tips and the last two are jumbo tips. I don’t use these Jumbo tips often, but they are always fun to use, and offer a lot more options! You can pick up tips at your local craft store, the larger ones I tend to pick up at baking stores.

Wilton Tip 1M, Wilton tip 2A, Bakery Crafts 6FT, Ateco 809, Ateco 868.

(random bit: my girls love to sit at the counter and arrange my tips while I work, the littles often pretend the big tips are the “mommy & daddy” and the small ones the “kids”. The joys and total weirdness of growing up with a baking blogger mommy!)

Now to get started!

First I get my bag, coupler, and tip ready. Just to clarify…I don’t ALWAYS use a coupler! If I know for sure what tip I need to use I just skip the coupler. Especially with these big couplers because they take up so much space. But they are really handy when needed so I wanted to make sure to include that step! :)

Then I stick my bag inside a cup and turn the top out so I can easily fill my bag with icing. You can also use your hand and fill it the same way, I find that I make a lot less mess this way :).

Once you’ve got your bag ready and twisted shut (here I used the ties) you need to squeeze out a bit of icing and make sure there are no air bubbles in the piping bag. I simply keep my bowl of icing beside me so that way I can push out as much as I need and reuse it once empty. (it’s also good to cover your bowl of icing in a wet paper towel to keep it from crusting) If you leave big air bubbles in your piping bag then eventually they will come through and break the stream of icing, totally wrecking your cute little swirl :(.

A few things to know before piping. Piping is about 90% pressure and 10% guidance. (let’s pretend I came to those number scientifically ok?) The amount of pressure you put on the bag will determine just how well, and evenly, if flows from the tip. You want to keep your pressure as steady as possible. You also want to guide the tip/icing while in front of where you are wanting the icing to fall. As you move you hand your icing needs to be following along right behind it, gently falling into place. Let’s see this in action…

For the first video I’ll cover how I pipe a traditional swirl using two different tips,Wilton Tip 1M, Wilton tip 2A. Same technique, very different outcome. You’ll just have to excuse my lack of talking while working skill and trying to stay in front of the camera lol. I should also add that when I’m normally working, I work a lot faster (and at better angle) so the icing falls so much better. Once you get the hang of it, it’s a quick and easy process.

And here’s a couple ways to mix it up a bit. Using the same tips.

The best way to learn how to do this is to practice of course. And if your type A like me, whip up some buttercream and practice piping on some parchment/wax paper. That way you don’t have to sacrifice some innocent cupcakes. ;) You can always scrape it right off and put it right back in your piping bag to keep trying. Oh! I should also tell you that if you DO mess up a cupcake pretty bad most often you can hold the cupcake over your icing bowl and let it fall right back in. There will be a small trace still on the cupcake, but you should be able to pipe right over it and get another shot at making it look good and still reuse the icing!

With a few different tips and some trial and error there is no limit to the different ways to frost a cupcake. I often alter mine by how I need it to look/function. Wait icing…function? Yep, for instance when I am using flat fondant topper I prefer to pipe a flat or low swirl of icing on my cupcakes, so the topper sits well. Other times I don’t plan on putting much more then a few sprinkles on and I want my icing piled nice and high. (just not like sugar coma high).

Another super important thing, you should also keep icing consistency in mind when picking out a tip and piping style. For example, when I use soft cream cheese icings I often use a round tip and pipe on a low swirl, because that icing just doesn’t hold up as well to designs or stacking.

I think that just about covers it! Once you’ve got piping down all you need is to throw some sprinkles on top and some cute cupcakes liners like these, and soon people will be ohhing and ahhing over your almost too pretty to eat cupcakes (but don’t worry they always eat them, yummy trumps pretty).

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