Miniature Royal Icing Cupcakes

I’m not sure if these “cupcakes” are eligible for the Guinness Book of World Records, but they sure are mighty tiny (smaller than a dime). All you’ll need to pipe them are a couple of different shades of royal icing, an open star tip #199 (it has many small teeth and is perfect for piping the “cup”), a #14 star tip, parchment paper squares, an offset spatula, and a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch. 

 Hold the tip #199 against the parchment square. Squeeze firmly while drawing the tip upwards. After just under a half-inch, stop pressure and pull the tip straight up and away.

 A peak will remain.

 Tap the offset spatula against the dusting pouch…

 … then tap it against the peak to form the flat base of the cupcake.

 Allow it to dry.

Peel it off the parchment. 

 Attach a #14 star tip to a bag of any color icing you like, and hold the tip perpendicular to the surface. Pipe a tiny swirl on top of the cupcake; start with the star tip just inside the edge.

 Allow it to dry, and serve it to dolls (or use it to decorate cupcakes, I guess!).

DIY Store-Bought Icing Pieces

Recently I saw something that I thought was preposterous. This pack of pre-made royal icing pieces:

I forget how much the price was exactly; around $4. My first thought was, those pieces are SO amateurish! And my second thought was, for $4, anybody could buy a 2 pound sack of powdered sugar, a can of meringue powder, and get to work piping hundreds of these pieces while a decent movie plays in the background. So without further adieu, here’s all you’ll need (in addition to the aforementioned movie)…

 …Icing in any colors you want, round tips #5 and #4, a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch, a flower nail, a glue stick, a Styrofoam block (so you have someplace to set the nail when you're switching colors), and a parchment paper square for each piece. Note: I’m not going to pipe the birds, because you already know how to make adorable birds out of royal icing. Start by sticking a parchment square to the flower nail with a dab from the glue stick.

 Pipe a tiny dot with the #5 tip; this will help keep you centered.

Pipe a tiny teardrop shape; lie the tip almost against the surface and a short distance from the dot. Squeeze firmly to build up a ball, then draw the tip toward the dot to create the "tail" of the teardrop. Stop pressure and pull the tip away. 

 

Repeat 5 times for a total of 6 petals. No worries if you wind up with a few extra petals. You might find it helpful to pipe the petals that lie opposite each other in pairs, instead of working your way around clockwise or counterclockwise. 

 Pipe a center dot with a contrasting color. If at any point you wind up with peaks you don't like, touch a fingertip to the dusting pouch and tap them down.

 I have no idea what those orange circular shapes are supposed to be in the above photo of the pre-fab pieces; suns, perhaps? Anyway, I'll show you how to recreate them. Load a round #12 tip onto a bag of whatever color icing you like, hold it just above the surface of a parchment square on the flower nail, and squeeze firmly until there's a round puddle of icing about the size of a nickel. Stop pressure, and pull the tip straight up and away.

 You'll probably be left with this imprint in the middle…

 …which you can tap out with a dusted fingertip.

 Final step: never buy pre-made royal icing pieces again! (as though you ever would, right?)

Royal Icing Toadstools

Here's a cute little project for all of your forest-themed cakes, fairy-inspired treats, Alice In Wonderland-esque tea parties, etc. All you need to pipe royal icing toadstools are a pile of parchment paper squares, stiff consistency royal icing (the thickness of toothpaste) in whatever colors you like, two round #12 tips (or be prepared to do a lot of switching back and forth), a round #3 tip, and a dusting pouch filled with a 50/50 mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch.  

 Start by piping the stems; you'll need a parchment square for each stem and each toadstool cap. Hold the tip just above the surface, squeeze steadily, and pull upwards.

 Stop pressure and pull the tip away.

 Touch a finger to the dusting pouch, and tap the stem into place. Flatten the top a little.

 Pipe the caps in a similar way, but keep the tip submerged as the cap forms to about the size of a nickel. The shape will be similar to a flattened Hershey's Kiss.

 Pull the tip out of the icing at a right angle…

 …then tap the cap smooth with a fingertip after touching it to the dusting pouch.

 Allow all the pieces to dry for about 20 minutes to half an hour. This gas stove is always warm even when it's off so they dried really quickly.

I used a #3 tip to pipe a few dots on each cap. 

I'm sure I took some artistic license with my color choices. 

 When the pieces are dry, squeeze a large dot of icing on the tip of the stem…

 …and attach the cap. Now wait for real fairies to show up and take a seat.

Drop Flowers

I'm not what you'd call a huge fan of drop flowers; there's something so prefab about them. Basically, you hold a tip perpendicular to whatever surface you're going to pipe on, squeeze out a flower while either holding the bag still or rotating it, and then add one or more dots or a star to the center. They don't have a lot of individuality. However, they're easy to crank out, and if you need 350 icing flowers to festoon an old-school wedding cake, they're probably the right flower for you unless you have nothing but time on your hands. 

The Wilton book from 1986, The Uses of the Most Popular Decorating Tips, has an amusing passage that might lead one to believe that some sort of snobbery about drop flower tips exists: "True drop flower tips have a center rod within the cone-shaped tip. This pipes a ring of petals with an open center." Be that as it may, you can pipe drop flowers with regular star tips, and I don't think the effect is different enough to be noteworthy. Here are three "true drop flower tips" though, according to the Wilton book: 

 Can you see the nail inside? That part where it's welded to the side collects icing like nobody's business. Be sure to clean it thoroughly when you're washing your tips (that's why you'll need this brush or one like it).

When you attach the tip to the coupler, line up the nail with that notch on the side, and it won't rotate around. Now you know what that notch is for, if you didn't already. 

 You can pipe drop flowers on a piece of parchment paper taped to a cookie sheet if you're making a lot of them…

 …or directly on cookies or something else, if you're just practicing.

 Hold the tip at a right angle with the tip touching the surface, and squeeze. My collection of tips that will pipe drop flowers is by no means exhaustive, but I'll show you a few that stand out.

 These first flowers were made with an Ateco #106. I rotated either the cookie or my wrist to form the curved petals.

 I gave all of the flowers in this post a center dot piped with a round #2 tip.

 These were piped with a Wilton #21 star tip held still…

…and these were piped with a twist. 

These were piped with an Ateco #96:

These were piped with a Wilton #224:

These larger flowers were piped with a Magic Tip #191:

And lastly, these tiny daisy-like flowers were piped with a Wilton #16, a small star tip rotated…

…and held straight. 

You can pipe drop flowers in buttercream directly on a cake, but I prefer piping them in royal icing on parchment, letting them dry, and then relocating them (or piping them directly on cookies, of course).