hey everyone it is noon on November 30th and we are now live here at at on the set of um the baking Journal um and I am excited because we are going to decorate these lovely little mini cupcakes um of course if you want to do regular siiz cupcakes just make the design a little bit bigger but I am really really thrilled with these little candles and then we're going to do the little wreaths as well um and the point setas right here so um without any further Ado let's go ahead and get get started the first thing that I wanted to show you guys is an easy way to get the flat tops on your icing because it'll just make it so much easier to um to decorate but also you know how much time I don't know if it's just me but I spent a lot of time sometimes taking my spatula and trying to get the icing on the top of the cupcake and then try to flatten it out and so this you're going to see is pretty gosh darn impressive about how quick this is going to be an easy so what I have here is just some vanilla buttercream and it's pretty stiff because I usually keep it on the stiff side so that it holds our decorations pretty well um but I have a very small this is a about uh it might be a tablespoon um size scoop and all we're going to do here is we're going to take a scoop of our buttercream I've got parchment line baking sheet right here I'm going to take that scoop and get it out of the I told you it was easy but hey um and just so I've got my little scoop on the tray I'm going to take my C cupcake and I'm going to put it tops side down and just gently press we're going to do that with all of these others because then we're going to get them into the freezer let me just here we'll just do this a little bit more assembly line and then we're just going to put them in the freezer for um maybe 5 minutes max and the icing is going to firm up and you are going to have a beautiful flat top to your cupcakes so for anyone maybe you've already iced your cupcakes if anyone is following along um and you can use this little trip with your next batch and don't worry if your little Scoops aren't perfect because you'll see when we get them out of the freezer um we can we can clean them up a little bit if we want them to look a little bit neater okay there's our icing here's our cupcakes press down press down we're going to use some of these for our decorations too so that's why I want to go ahead and get them in the freezer for us and this also helps too if you have your cupcakes aren't AR perfectly flat on the top no worries the icing will kind of wrap around that that little Dome all right into the freezer we go all right back up guys I already have some cupcakes ready with the flat tops here um so we can get started and the first decoration we're going to make is going to be the point CA um it all of these are really easy but I do just want to make sure that you guys know that heyy if they don't come out perfect no worries because even in nature No 2 point studos probably look alike um and um just have fun with it no matter what they're going to taste wonderful um and um and and everyone's going to enjoy them so you know just this is a holidays you guys come on it's supposed to be fun and joyous light right don't don't don't get caught C up in in a lot of the details here but you will be impressed when you see how easy these are all right the first thing I want to show you with this too is just a little easy way um I know I mean people fill piping bags all different ways um I remember years ago watching Martha Stewart um do her like fill her piping bags and she of course because you know it's Martha and I do love Martha but um you know she would she would do it all you know by hand and she she'd fold her her bag over and then she put it in one hand right and she take her icing and she do it with the other hand I'm not that coordinated so um I'll show you a different way that's I think a little bit easier but first we need to get either a couple which is what I'm using um to put into our bag or you can just put a tip right one of your your piping tips you can put your piping tip directly into the bag the reason why I am using a coupler is because if I want to switch my piping tips then all I need to do is just unscrew my coupler switch out tips and I don't have to worry about about you know the having the icing in the bag that would be difficult to to get out and reuse in a different bag um it just makes life easier but if I do know that I'm going to use up all of the icing in my bag then I can just directly put the tip in and go from there but all right enough said let's do this so we take our little coupler or tip kind of measure it right um and and and mark with your fingers where you want to cut your bag we have a question what's your favorite holiday dessert to decorate well you know I probably if we would have done this a week ago or so um earlier I would have told you um cakes definitely cakes and cupcakes but last last week I made a few pies um for Thanksgiving and honestly now I'm I'm I'm getting into the whole pie decorating thing um so so anyway um great question and um what I did I just cut my tip off now normally I would say cut your tip away from where you're working because nobody wants to find a a little Piping Bag in their icing and and trust me it's easy to happen and they're clear you can't really see them so all right I cut my tip you want to bring your either your tip or your coupler to the edge there like that and then we're just going to I use a mason jar but if you have you know a tall glass just go ahead and get your um your bag and your tip in there it naturally will kind of turn to the side which is a good thing and then just kind of open up your bag and here I saved some red because I thought um that would be easiest for you to see and we're just going to fill our bag but you know what I need a little spat okay here we go so here's our red now TR I've been I've been doing this now for a few years and I've tried this all different ways um sometimes I try and just cram everything down in the bag at once but I'm finding that it's easier just to do this a little bit at a time question how do you get your red so red huh well you know red is hard I I'll be honest um because you feel like you have to use so much gel or or you know red food coloring to make it red but um but honestly um the if you buy the gel um food coloring those are more concentrated and then I just found um recently that they have powders and so you can use powders too so you're you feel like you're not putting as much um food coloring in and and plus you don't want to put a lot of liquid in here because that's going to change the consistency of your of your icing you're not going to get your good designs another question if you aren't using a coupler what tip is first for those of you following along great question so we are we're going to since we're starting with the point seta and um I the red is going to get this little leaf tip which I think you guys can see it looks like a little bird's beak basically yeah um and that is number 352 Wilton um so yeah go ahead and get your get your um tip in your bag so okay so now we've got our icing in and honestly this amount of icing is probably the most I would put in a bag um because the more icing you have in the bag the harder it's going to be for you to have control and after a while anyway the warmth of your hands kind of um softens the icing so it you don't get those nice crisp designs now the other thing that I learned because I spent probably too many years trying to take my fingers and get it get it down um and so now an easy way you find the little creases on your bag put it on a flat surface and then anything you have that's kind of flat on one end um I would stick with something though that's plastic because I've used like the metal dough Cutters before and I've literally like made a hole in my bag so using um your flat Edge you're just going to push that icing and it's this is a stiff icing because I want to make nice pretty point setus but we're just going to keep pushing it in until it gets down and fills our bag pretty well so see see I pushed it down the other thing too that we're going to do is now squeeze it up and we want to kind of push it so that it gets to the point where we can see it there thanks I have helpers I have I have Christmas elves here that are helping me um which is so exciting um all right so we've now push this in just so that as we're decorating we don't have icing come out the other end of our bag which has happened to me in the past you can buy they they sell little things that you know clip onto the edge of your your bag but I just use a rubber band and we just close it up and now we're going to go put that leaf tip um or bird beak onto the end of our bag here and our cupler and then we take the outer ring and just connect it that way um and now I just want to get um that icing to the point here I'll do it on here I want to get that icing to the point where it's coming out of our bag and there we have it so we've got we've got our icing out this is really stiff you guys um and which is also not a bad thing to do while I'm thinking of it here before we actually pipe onto our cupcakes it's you can certainly practice you can practice on a piece of parchment paper you can practice on your counter if you want to clean it up later you can practice on whatever you want but it's a good idea to just kind of do a trial run now for these po setas um we're just going to take our our our piping tip and we want the the bird beak to be this way right so we've got our Point like at the top here and we would just take this and squeeze squeeze squeeze and then you release the bag and you make a little point at the end it's kind of small but you can you can make them wider if you want your leaves to be wider by just spending more time in one spot and then you release and pull back so see how that second one is a little bit wider but feel free to practice um as much as you want before you actually put it on your cupcake so are we ready here we go first one um and I have chocolate on here chocolate icing on my chocolate cupcake but certainly these look fabulous on white icing whatever flavor cupcake you you want is perfect and the other thing that I just wanted to tell you guys too so certainly I mean you can make your cupcake CES by scratch right you can make your Icing by scratch um but I'm not going to tell if you are buying cake mix off the shelf or even that lovely little icing that you can get in a can um who's to know right um I just want you to you know have fun with it and and give it a go that's the most important thing so okay so we're going to start our Point seta in the center of our cupcake and now we are just making our first leaf and poinsettas so I've got one in the back here so wait let me count how many leaves are on a poinsetta so one two three four five six seven or so all right so not that um not that it's going to look like that point Setta but what we're going to do then is figure out we're going to put Let's do let's do five leaves on the bottom and then we're going to do five leaves on the top too the other thing too I mean you see I'm pushing at the top but because this is such stiff buttercream that I'm also using you know my my left hand to help ease it through probably not the best technique but hey I do whatever I can to make it work so here's our first row of poinsetta leaves right there now all we're going to do is go on on top uh in between those leaves and put our second row and this time we might just try and kind of lift up it's not really like going you like totally up as we lift our our Leaf but we're just squee s squeeze squeeze release and point in between we're going in between our existing leaves squeeze squeeze squeeze and I think I'll do one more squeeze squeeze squeeze and lift and release so now here here we have our poett up we can leave it here we could add another row if if you want to do that um um in fact I think I'm going to put just a few little short ones like right on top I just want you guys to feel like do do let your creativity out do whatever you feel um would look good and would be fun for you to try out and if you try it out on one and you don't like it um you have options right you don't have to repeat it or it like that first row if you didn't like that first row you could have scraped it off and put it in a discard B bowl and just start over again so you know have fun don't obsess about it so okay I'm happy with the way this little poinsetta is looking right here um but we're not finished yet oh we have another question not a question but yours like your gnomes thank you I I have had um the the gnome that gnome in the in the poinsetta I've had for now several years and he just comes out every holiday season and that gnome um beside him is a cookie jar um and honestly I just um I think it's okay for me to say it I just G yesterday at Costco so okay all right um let's now the next thing is we want to put our little yellow stams in um the center of our poinsetta so for that and I already have my my yellow here made up and in my bag with a coupler so for that I am putting my for these little stamans um I I a seven here a Wilton seven it's just um a small round tip you don't have a seven you can use a six you can use a five you can I probably wouldn't go much bigger than than a seven because it might look odd you have big fat stamans but um but that's okay and where is my see you never have everything here all right needed a little here we go needed a little um connector for my my tip okay let's get this on and um and these are easy these are just little stamans here and again if you want to just kind of practice first I'm getting because I needed to get my icing to the tip there we go so see it's just a little it's not sticking that's okay it'll stick to I'll show you how it sticks to our butter cream um not a great great practice but let's move on all right so now all you're going to do is you're going to do probably three um little stamans um maybe more let's see how it fills out but you do want your icing to connect with your current icing so what you're going to have to do is kind of go down in that Center and actually almost poke the the um the act the icing the red icing to get our Stam in and see this seven is actually kind of too too fat but it'll work and we're just connecting it and lifting up I think three is good can you guys see that um just gives us a little element of more realism to to our Point seta and now I'm trust me we're gonna we'll do this um a couple more times so um so no one's like if anyone's doing this with me no one's falling behind here um we can we can figure it out and then the last thing that we need for this is um our leaves so for that for our leaves we're going to use our Leaf tip again that one makes sense huh and there and I've got some green here so I am again going to connect my tip to our coupler and so there's there actually are two schools of thought here we could have done our leaves first we could have put some leaves around the edge of the cupcake first and then put our pointsetta over our um our leaves but I kind of like to do it this way so that I can fill in the parts that you know aren't with don't have anything and just all you see is the icing on top um again get our little green started and here we go so here's a hole so I'm going to try and get a little bit under if I can the poinsetta and you know what if some of it we just want short little leaves here so I'm just some of these are going to do like two leaves some of them I'll do just one but I'm just going in between the red and putting a little bit of green leaf here and again so I think I didn't mention but whenever you're doing a leaf you want your Leaf tips so here it you can't really tell maybe but there it's a beak right and so you always want your pointy side up when you're doing um any sort of leaf decorations and I'm just going around the cupcake and getting leaves on all of the areas that were left kind of empty palette here or empty canvas I should say let I just add just just look at it and see maybe you know add a little extra Leaf here or there up to you um I get a little carried away sometimes with leaves but um it's just I don't know why but I just I love the element of green um and the contrast that um leaves always have whenever you're decorating so here we have our leaves all the way around um and now the um crowning Jewel to our cupcake will be I've got these little these are just sprinkle cake sprinkles they just little rice paper that um you can buy at any like cake supply store you can get them online um I and you know they're everywhere but they are just going to take just a little bit and I am just sprinkling the top they these have no flavor at all you guys and they don't do anything really they don't change the texture or anything like that um but they just add a nice little holiday Sparkle and then here you have one point set of done and you might say oh my God I'm not going to take all of this time to do all of these cupcakes they get faster as you go and when you don't have someone like me that's like talking in between all of that they really do go pretty quick so we're going to do another one but before we do another one I do want to get the cupcakes out of the freezer that I put in because I want to show you what a beautiful little canvas we now have and okay so here they are out of the freezer and all we need to do is just basically these will lift nice and cleanly off of the parchment since they're frozen and we have look we have a lovely flat surface to to now create our decorations so I'm going to get the rest of these guys up real quick and you can see that some of them might be a little wonky but that's okay we'll um when when they kind of deoss just a little bit um we'll just even those up because we can right now we can kind of take them and just smooth them out a little bit as we get them off but but they just come off just as easy I want to show you just because you so you believe me they come off just as easy as they can be off of the parchment and now they're flat any tips for not destroying the cupcakes when you take off the paper wrappers so you mean the the actual cupcake liner um are they destroyed um uh I I don't is your cupcake too like I mean I'm sure it's delicious but is your cupcake may be too moist or uh too soft um they should come off pretty easily um but if they don't use a fork right I mean pull I've done that before when I put them in sometimes those really stiff cupcake liners um you can't you just can't they're gray for baking in but you can't get the cupcake out very easily um so I I mean when I want a cupcake I want a cupcake so I just grab a fork and eat it like it was a piece of cake um and these would be kind of fun I guess to do with a fork right I mean you could you can just couple bites and you're there on these babies all right all right so we have these guys so let's go ahead because I do want to show you little difference the these this icing is still really cold right just came out of the freezer so let me show you how the difference in you know like piping when you have something that's still really really cold um because it's going to make it a little bit trickier for your icing to adhere um your decorations to adhere and in this case I am going to do the reverse of what we did the last time meaning I'm going to start with my green just to show you you know you if maybe you didn't feel good about jamming this in between your little poinsetta leaves um and you just like well St let's try it this way so we're going to um and we for for the leaves we don't need to go to the center like we did for the poinsetta right we're just going to take this and we're going to go on the edge but because our icing is frozen I really am kind of going very deep um in I mean I'm taking that bottom point of our Leaf tip and I'm I'm pretty much indenting this icing and that way I know that my icing is going to stay where I want it to stay and won't come back up on um my tip with me so there we go let's go all the way around you know when I'm really feeling fancy I have a little turntable and I just kind of put this on a little turntable and do my little turntable um which is kind of fun yeah that's that flow remote okay do you use consistent pressure for squeezing the bag when you're making different styles I try um I'm going to tell you that that is what you should do and that's what's recommended but sometimes at least with my like funky hands it and the the stiffness of the buttercream it makes it difficult sometimes to give a nice even pressure so that's why too I use my left hand sometimes I'm right-handed so I use my left hand to sometimes help me get that butter cream out um and there are also times when I want like a little ridy effect so I don't know if you can really see that on on these but if I especially for my leaves so if I want to make it more leaflike right um I am going to kind of go in and out and in and out a little bit and that you can maybe see is a little riggy on um on the edge and I just gives a little element of um uh reality of actual nature um to give it that little effect and and you can see so on that leaf I kind of released too late and I've got that weird little tip there it's just a little weird little leaf so um I'm totally cool with that um and hey you know I don't know maybe I mean I have dogs that like to eat leaves so I don't know um we can we can make all sorts of stories up about what happened to that little leaf um so okay so I'm just like I said I get a little obsessive when it comes to leave so um you don't have to be but all right so there are our leaves now let's go to our red for our point setas is it po or potia I don't know somebody weigh in on that um it was a funny little comment so if anyone watched um the one of our YouTube videos on um I think was uh the faka so they they were correcting my pronunciation of faka on so I love it I need to learn things all the time so keep those comments coming try and keep them nice all right so here's our point setter we're going to the center here again our icing is still a little cold so we're just trying to connect our icing to our cupcake and we are making our poin set of leaves so again we're going in we're pushing pushing pushing releasing and making a point go to the center pushing pushing pushing release and pushing pushing pushing release here I'm going to put a six one here on our bottom oops that one was kind of that was kind of uh a thin one but hey again we're just going to keep going now we do our second row one 2 and you know you could go crazy actually if you wanted to with these points set is you could you know put little dots on them you could add more elements um whatever you prefer but I just think they look pretty darn cool let's keep it as simple as we possibly can um and um because I I have seen where people take um some of the yellow and maybe make little dots going down or they have white icing um and here I'm going to stop with our third row right there so so far this is what we've got for this guy see this um the this particular icing I've got a little higher up so we have more of a a kind of cool effect here with our poinsetta and now I'm just G to I've got this little bit of plastic here so I'm just going to wipe our tip clean and now again we're going to go deep into that Center and push and release deep into the center push and release with our yellow and deep into the center push and release looks like a flower in the snow that's that is lovely thank you it does doesn't it um yeah to point set like live out in the snow I don't know but it but we're we're going with it right it's and now we're going to put the crowning snowflakes on top with our sprinkles so again I just take a little bit pinch them in my between my finger and my thumb and voila there we have it our poinsetta so are you guys ready to go on to the next one all right let's uh let's do it all right so now um let's go to our wreaths let's do our wreaths next so for our wreaths let me just um get all of our stuff here so we need um our we're going to need our red we need our green and okay all right um those my elves I'm not used to having elf helpers it's so exciting all right um and here we go so now our wreath we have some sprinkles [Music] and again because I'm using um um the couplers um I could if I wanted to use this green um which I do like so I'm going to um but just so you see I made I made another green too so you know what we could do is we could swap out the greens um um we could do a little bit of both if you if you you know prefer but um just to show for demo purposes um uh I'm just gonna I'm GNA stick with this and change the tip um from what I have um the thing about and and I I'm not sure that I said this already but if you didn't want to do Minis and you wanted to do regular size cupcakes what I think would be cool when you're doing this wreath is to do two different colors um because you've got more of a surface to fill in and I think it just would look really pretty if you had two different shades of greens at this point but let's go ahead and change our change out our our tip here so for our wreaths we are using a it's an open star tip basically and it is uh 32 Wilton 32 size that we're using um I'm putting this just like I put the others on but see how easy that is I didn't have to do anything with um my icing all I had to do was change out my my piping tip it just makes it if you're doing a bunch of these and you're you're doing different designs I think makes it a whole lot easier um so we have our green and and then we have our red which we're going to make the little bow um so here I only have one bag of red um but I'm I to switch out that tip as well um and because so normally if I were switching out tips and I were finished using the tip i' put them in a bowl I can't tell you how many of these things have gone down my garbage disposal and you turn on the garbage disposal you're you he this terrible grinding sound and then you hear my husband again didn't you I told you you need to use a filter so um and then I have to buy some more Packing Tips so word to the wise keep them separate another question if your icing gets warm using it this long can you put the whole bag in the fridge yes you can don't leave it in the fridge for a really long time um otherwise then you're going to have the opposite problem where it's going to going to be too stiff for you to do anything with and you're going to find yourself manipulating it trust me I've done it before so just put it yeah put it in the in the fridge maybe for like five minutes or so um and it should firm up pretty nicely okay there we go now I think we're ready for our wreath all right I'm going to use my little chocolate dyes here um and we're going to start with our green with our open star and this is so easy you guys and all we're going to do is make a circle around our cupcake with our green and we're just going to again let's get make sure our yep we're at the end here and now we're just going to pipe directly down and push and then lift up and I'm not worried about these points because what what I like to do when we put the sprinkles on I'm just going to press it gently into the sprinkles so that will then depress that little tip um and we're just going to go around our cupcake in a circular fashion to make our wreath look at that pretty quick pretty easy um you know if we had if we wanted to do another color you could just do another color randomly on top um you know if you wanted more fatter you know wreath you could certainly make these you hold the tip longer and just make the actual uh icing make it just it'll make it that much thicker um here we'll just and then we we can just add maybe a couple little extras that will get depressed when we put our icing on I'm not going to do it like all around I lied um but there okay so now before we put our bow on I want to get this into our sprinkles um and I've just got a bowl of sprinkles I'm using this is like a rainbow mix it's got different it's got circles it's got jimmies it's got a little bit of um sugar in there um sugar crystals so but use whatever I mean this time of year they've got you know if you want all red or if you want red and green and white or whatever your heart desires um it's it's yours it's yours to choose so for this I'm just going to turn it upside down and very gently press into our sprinkles and there's our decorated wreath now that was all easy the bow gets a little tricky so um and only because it's you know it it's small right um and we're trying to do something right we're trying to make it into you know something that we that looks like a bow um or is recognizable as a bow so pick you know look at your cupcak see okay what what area hey do I want to Maybe cover up a little bit and um and we're going to take our um red piping with our number six this is number six wilon I have on here you can go smaller it will look really pretty even smaller but I chose the six because because anything smaller it gets really really hard for me to get the get the buttercream out of the bag and all I'm going to do is make a figure eight so a figure eight sideways right a little infity sign um I'll start in the center of my infinity sign and then just go around now I'm not touching the cupcake at all I'm just very lightly um in on top of my icing and there you guys can see there's the little infinity sign and now we're just going to do our little strands the easiest way to keep our strands attached it's you know if I were making a bow in out of ribbon I would love my strands to come straight down and I'd have them you know a little bit fluffy but we want our icing to kind of we want our strands to stay on so I'm just going to put our strands over to the side more from the center of our little infinity sign and I'm just going to drag it over to the side so the icing we just want the icing to have something to grab on to basically so you see how we just made that into a little bow I think it looks darling I don't think it needs anything else this is not one I mean it's got sprinkles so I don't think we need to put any little glitter on but that is a keeper so let's do let's do another one here well we'll do here we'll do a white icing one here and in fact I think yeah I'm going to do one that has kind of a wonky top so you can see that you don't have to worry if your little caps aren't perfectly round and plus I'm just gonna I'm just gently it's still cold and the icing still is moldable so I'm just kind of pushing in so I don't have any random or errant little pieces of icing out there okay now and our wreath can cover up a wh of ills here by going around the circle so here we go flat push release and go up push release push and release push and release push and release push all the way around and I think because we haven't gone all the way you can see a lot of chocolate on the side of the actual cake so I'm just gonna for this guy I'm just going to go along the sides a little bit why not right um and that way then we're kind of covering up our cupcake and just making our wreath a little bit bigger so see you can kind of you know take it as you see it you guys do whatever you think would look nice and again if it really doesn't work out you just eat it there's no evidence right um okay but there see um now we've got a really big wreath but that's okay we've just covered up any any areas of our icing that we missing um some spots and we've made a nice big wreath so again now it's time to dip bring your Sparkles or sprinkles over and gently so talk about you know how do you get cupcakes out of uh how do you keep them from not getting all kind of wonky if they're soft and these guys are soft cupcakes um um being very gentle so I don't like really push my fingers into the cupcake and um messing everything up that way um and look at that isn't that pretty um plus my green is getting pretty soft here um so now and and I don't you you guys probably can't see but we've got a little unevenness here so all I'm doing is just with my fingers I'm just straightening it out and that unevenness there is where I'm going to put my my bow so there's always a way to cover up anything any imperfections that you feel might um bug you um as you're as you're presenting these to your friends and family all right let's put a bow on so remember our sideways uh figure eight or infinity signs start in the center press make a bow or a loop make another loop and bring it to the center here is oh so the comment is you're the Bob Ross of baking no mistakes just happy read absolutely no mistakes um ever ever with with yeah I mean I'll say no mistakes with decorating right I mean I made plenty of mistakes in the baking world I always joke that there are days that the baking Gods just aren't looking favorably upon me so no matter and I think that happens to everyone I don't care how long you've been baking and stuff happens so you just got to go with the flow um definitely but thank you thank you for that comment all right and here's our see um yeah the bakon gods the decor and gods are saying oh Stephanie come on we can't have you just do this without something to deal with and here's our ribbon ends and again a lovely little wreath all right guys and this guy you this guy is being a little wonky so if you guys weren't here I probably stick that one in my mouth right now um all right um let's move on to the final one which is my absolute favorite this is the first year that i' ever tried making a candle out of buttercream I never even thought that that would that's a thing or that would be possible until I I I scour the internet I scour Instagram I see all sorts of things and um and then and I saw this I was like oh my god I've got to do this so okay um so for our candle we need we need our candle uh buttercream which is just I didn't do anything to this this is just the ivory whitish buttercream um that I made for the icing we are um and I guess I should say I knew I was only using the white for the candles so I went ahead and put this tip which is um fairly large round tip um it's an 804 um it that if you don't have like these exact numbers just know that you just need a fat wide you know round tip to make a candle um but we have that guy there and then we are going to need we haven't used this poor green so we haven't used this green we are going to need um a green [Music] um uh with a with a leaf tip so we saved our Leaf tip so I'm just going to put our the leaf tip that we took off for the other one um just putting this on our different shade of green here and we are need so our red um for our candles is just yeah it's just for our little centers um no I'm sorry my bad our our Reds are the stars the little star tips so so we have for our little flowers around the candle this is a closed star tip it's a Wilton 31 I think if my eyes don't deceive me um so we're putting that on our red and then all we need um we have our leaves we just want a little green in the center so that's what we're using our different shade of green for and for that um we are just going to swap out for this this is a Wilton 7 just a small round tip okay all right thank you and not used to talking to you guys this much are we having fun can you hear the Christmas music in the background I'm getting ready here um and like I said this I I am just I'm totally thrilled with this little guy so here's here's our our candle you can see him sideways I'm just I love this guy all right so for this one let's go ahead and take our white background or our snow background um and we're going to start with leaves so let's take the green that we have placed our Leaf tip on and I'm just going to clean this tip a second so always a good idea to have like a little paper towel or something available so that you can just clean off your tips from time to time um now this is going to since I still have some of the other Green in um this Leaf tip here for for at least the first um cupcake that we do you we're going to either get a blend or we're going to see like a a little TR color in our leaves which hey is totally okay um so now to make our leaves again we're just we don't for this we can actually go pretty much to the center because that's where our candle's going to be um and we're just going to place our flowers over the green so to make it easier we can start towards the center and and I'm making a little wavy design and I want these leaves to be fairly close to other so I'm I'm not worrying about like how many I'm going to do I'm just trying to get varying shapes and I'm if I press a little harder you can see that some of those leaves are fat the couple leaves that I just did are fatter than the first one so I kind of like the the variation and size and here we're getting a variation in the color which is kind of cool um just I'm using a a decent amount of pressure and and making kind of a wavy with my hand so this is where you know like constant pressure would not be something that um would give us the same effect so I but I want that little waviness in my leaves I think it just gives it a more reality kind of look and we could stop here I've gone all the way around but and I think we will because I think we can fill in um when we get our candle and we get our flowers all on so let's let's just stop there and now I am going to because I want to Center everything else around the candle I'm going to take my big round tip and this is just so cool so we're just going to go in the center of our leaves Le the very center of our leaves and we're going to touch those leaves and just press press while we're pulling up I'm very gradually pulling up and then I'm releasing and I'm just kind of touching up as I go oh you know what we forgot we forgot the for our candle we need we you need yellow silly me because our flame is going to be our yellow so let me clean this off a second because we're going to go ahead and put our flame on and now for our flame just go in the center the very center of your candle actually put the um piping tip into the center because you really want your flame to stick and then we're just going to come up and that is it you have your flame I mean is that not the coolest thing ever I know I get excited about weird stuff but that to me is pretty exciting okay all right now let's um next our red okay um and now we're going to make our flowers around the green so just starting wherever you want to start but uh in between I would say so in between like the end you don't want to go towards the end of the leaf but you don't want to be right on top of the candle either so it's like right kind of in the aim for the center area there and this is um this is a closed star which here I'll show you on here what this does and it just depending on how much pressure or how long you hold it you can see that it just makes that cool little flower design and you know if you don't want that openness you just go on top and you do it again so you can really you know be as creative as you want with this but see how that kind of closes up that flower um now I will be the trick here too is sometimes with this tip it it likes to lift so you you you think oh I really like this this is perfect and you go to lift and now you've lifted your flower with you so you just kind of play with it you'll get a sense for you know how much pressure and how to lift but I'm I am going to press it into my area just slightly and just give it a little bit of a push and lift up and as you can see I don't really like that it didn't really hold a lot of the icing on there so I'm just going to go back in there and do it again and there we go now it it gives it a little oops it gives it a little bit of depth but also then makes my flower a little bit bigger and then we're just going to go and repeat that all the way around our candle see that one didn't quite work either that's why I said don't don't get too uptight about this because you know honestly it it buttercream is forgiving um and you can always you can either take it off which in this case I wouldn't necessarily recommend because then you have red all over but you can do something else with it did you make the buttercream do you have a preferred recipe so I did make this buttercream and um we have the recipe um for everything here available um uh on is it can they get to it I know you can get it to it a link that will take you to C's website um but even if you know even you know if you didn't it's still you bought your icing you're you're totally cool the one thing that I've learned over the years though for decorating I'm using American buttercream I know some people feel like it's too sweet I mean you can use Swiss buttercream um I've not had as much luck in decorating with Swiss buttercream they also have stuff now it's called I think Korean buttercream I mean there's all sorts of now buttercreams out here but what I use um pretty exclusively at least for decorating um is American buttercream um there are ways that you can flavor it so that you know that sweetness is not like that first hint that oh my gosh my teeth are falling out and it's so sweet it's um but the ratio which works for me um is always one part butter so if I'm using and I do it in grams because I I usually measure stuff out so let's just say I know that one stick of butter is 113 grams so if I'm only going to make a really small batch of of buttercream I take that 113 and I double it for the amount of confectioner sugar that I put in there so um 226 right I would use 226 grams of confectioner sugar to 113 grams so it's it's a 2:1 ratio and then I always flavor my buttercream with a little a little bit of vanilla um but also a little bit of almond extract I just think that gives it an extra little flavor um but the other key too to making it not so um sickeningly sweet is you put a little bit of salt it sounds counterintuitive but it really does make a difference so great question thanks for asking um all right so back to our little flowers okay I see one little spot here maybe that and then and also yeah so look you know you've you've gone around the candle you've you've got your design there and I always look at it okay I've gone around but do I want to add anything else is there something you know am I kind of uneven and I see a little area right here that I just want to add a little bit more but did you see see my icing comes back up that's okay okay it just um makes it that much more textur and then thank you I my my elf just brought me our sprinkles because we do need our sprinkles um I am loving this you guys I'm normally running around oh where did I put this oh no I don't know what what's going on um it's just me so okay so here's our Our Little Flower we want to now add our last little element um to our flowers just to give them just one more little oomph of of reality and what we're doing is we're going to put a little green dot inside each one of our little flowers here so I'm going to do is go to a center of our flower put a little Green Dot in the center pretty easy peasy don't worry if you know you don't get every little Center just enough to give it a little bit give it another little look and you can see I put the centers you could put yellow in the centers um in fact we'll do another one and maybe do it with yellow in the center just um do whatever you um feel you like now I do want more though because I said right let's see what the green looks like at the end of the day um for our leaves so I do just want to add a few more leaves um because I just think it'll make it look a little more festive so I'm just going to go in the areas that um are kind of open there and we can see more of the white icing and I'm just going to add my leaves and I think I think okay see how there we go we just filled in filled in the little white areas we can still see some white of the icing and then finish it off with our Sparkles and again pinch sometimes they Clump but that's okay just gives it that more natural kind of glittery holiday snowy effect and there you have it very very cute candle all right let's do one more sa sprinkles okay let's see how fast we can do this one you guys because you're probably saying oh my God I don't have that much time to do all of this um and and that's okay but we can do it quicker so I'm not going to talk on this one just watch me do it and we'll see um we'll see how quick it goes for for for for there we go see that wasn't too bad you're just concentrating and focusing and you have all of your stuff ready and out and available these really do go quite quickly after after you get the first few done and they are really cute and they will Delight anyone I'm sure that you give them to or share them with or don't share them at all right eat them all yourself hey I'm I'm good with that would you use the same buttercream cakes yes absolutely so especially if I'm decorating right um what I sometimes will do though because it can be overwhelmingly sweet with all of this American buttercream on a big cake is I might do a um Swiss buttercream to actually coat the cake and then um and then do my decorations in American buttercream I have done that in the past sometimes you know I might ice in a a cream cheese icing too or you know some other flavor but then I still stick with the the good old American butter cream because I just think it it really holds up the design a whole lot better plus the other thing that's nice about American buttercream is it it really is good no matter what the weather is doing so you know if it's warmer um where you're at it this still will um the American buttercream will hold up it won't totally melt down on you um and the and it gets a crust kind of that doesn't sound really you know appetizing but it it when it's exposed to air it does firm up and so it's that you know that firmness then that helps it to create um and to maintain its its um shape which is what I love about it if you post photos of your cupcakes on Instagram or wherever you prefer tag us oh so I'm supposed to just tell you that all right so wait show me again show show me again I will I will tell everyone because honestly really we I'd love to see if you do this please show send us pictures let us know comment I mean tell me tell me what's going on out there I I would love to see what you all create I'm sure it can be more fabulous than what you've seen here today so if you post photos of your cupcakes on Instagram or wherever you prefer tag us at cconnect and um this pretty much wraps up our live session I hope you guys have fun I hope you learned something you know if you weren't able to follow along you can always refer back to um this we're on YouTube at baking Journal um so give us a shout check out my other recipes um we always have more coming we've got tips and tricks we've got some shorts um there's lots to see and lots to do um uh from the baking journal and um thanks you guys I hope you have a wonderful holiday see you soon