Royal Icing Flowers & Leaves for Beginners

Hello everyone, today we are going to learn how to make

flowers

, how wonderful is that we will make them with

royal

icing

, but you can transfer these skills and use them with buttercream too, but mainly these are the ones that I make for my cookies, so these are the tips I'm going to use today, open and close star tips and some petal tips, so I'll show you the slight differences between some of them and the biggest difference between the others, and if you have some of these tips, you don't necessarily you need one or the other.

I'll show you an example of all of them so you can see what you have and today we will also use a flower nail to make a rose. So if you have one of those great ones, if not you can always buy one at Michael's or Hobby Lobby, they're pretty cheap and it's always a good tool to have in your kitchen, so the first flower we're going to make today is going to be a rosette. so we're going to need some really hard

royal

icing

. You can see here. I'm playing with it and it keeps the shape of it.

Every little movement I make keeps the shape of it. That's what we're looking for. So I'm going to put it here in my bag and get ready to go, but before I do that I'm going to start massaging my bag and the reason I do that is to get all the air bubbles out. You can see when I have my bag here. There are a lot of air pockets in here and when you're placing

flowers

you don't want them in there, so I open my bag and squeeze the frosting to let the air out. The top of the bag doesn't have to be perfect, but the less bubbles you have, the better your flowers will look, so first we'll make some smaller rows, smaller rosettes so you can see.

I have two prongs here, one open star prong. and a closed star tip, so I'm using the Wilton number 21 tip and the Wilton tip number 30 just so you know, but you can use about the same little bit larger and smaller, so here I'm just going to make sure to cut. my bag about halfway up the point, if you cut it too small your bag will interfere with the end of the point where the shape is formed, so you don't want to make it too small or too big. I'm just cutting a little hole that lets the air out and then I'm going to squish my bag more just to get a clean, straight cut.

I'm going to cut again with the seam in the middle. It's not a big deal because we have a tip, but. it just makes a cleaner cut on the bag. I'm going to cut my second bag here again. This, the tip is going to go inside this bag, so I just want to make sure that I'm going to cut it big enough so that the bag is not going to be above the opening of the tip because we want those nice, clean lines to form the flower, so if you notice here, I'm actually using two bags, I like to put two bags in my frosting, the reason is that if I want to change the tips or the colors of my tips, it's easy to just take out that second bag of frosting and I have a new bag.

Here you can see that my bag doesn't cover any part of the tip at the bottom where it's open and we're. Okay, so I'm going to slide my icing bag in there and again if I want to change colors or change the tips, it's very easy to just take out my icing and change the tip or change the color and use it. tip for another color, so we're just going to take it out to make sure you can see what the shape is. I'm using the open star tip, so again this is the Wilton number 21 tip.

You can make it a little bigger or smaller, but this is a good tip for cookies that I like, so I'm going to show you here on a piece of parchment paper. I want to hold my bag perpendicular to the cookie or paper. I'm not angled and then just pushing. outwards slightly, so this is a very simple flower. Basically, I'm perpendicular to the surface and I just push the pressure out and then release the pressure and push up slightly so you can see here if my tip is a little bit to the side. The flower goes to one side, I just want to clean up the tip in the middle and start again because sometimes you tend to get frosting, so once again we make it perpendicular to the surface and now we're going to make our rosettes. so I press and then I just wrap the flower so you can see here again, I'm going to clean my tip to start a new flower, so I'm going to start clean and again I'm going to apply perpendicular pressure and sort of overlapping the center as I make the flower, It's not sticking very well right now because it's parchment paper, so it's twisting as I go, but on a frosted cookie it will stick much better here, we're going in the opposite direction.

You can see that it doesn't really matter if you go, you know, clockwise, counterclockwise, whatever you feel comfortable with, so now I'm going to change the tips and I'm going to put tip number 30, which is the closed starting tip. It's kind of a rounded star and I just want to show you what the difference is so there's not too much of a difference here, but I just want to show you so you know and obviously the bigger the point, the bigger the flower will be. The smaller your tip will be, the smaller your flower will be.

The open and closed toe is just a slight difference. I probably can't tell on a cookie which one they used, but just so you know like I said. if you have one and not the other, it's not the end of the world, they both work very well, so again I'm going to work perpendicular to my surface, put pressure in the middle, build the middle a little bit here and just drop flowers. These are very easy to fill, as you can see. I prefer the open star tip for these. These are a little more unstable and harder to get the icing out of because the tip is a little more closed and the icing is not.

It's not free flowing and now if we do some rosettes I build up a little bit of frosting in the middle and then apply pressure as I roll down the middle and overlap and then release the pressure and continue to pull on my tip as I release it. of pressure to get that little end and again I'm cleaning my tip in the middle so I start again building up a little bit of pressure in the middle pressure tube and then I release it and somehow I get the tip to continue going around like this the tip curves nicely, so you can see this one here.

I'm going to put a little less pressure to make a smaller flower and you can see again that it doesn't stick well because the parchment, but on a cookie, it will stick. a little bit better and if you have a tip like this you can use your scribe and just roll it up and hold it back and finish off the flower if you have the end that hangs down so you can look at the difference it's actually not that big so this one was the open star tip at the top and then you have the closed star tip at the bottom again, it's not a huge difference, whichever one you decide to use is just personal preference so now let's use the larger tips here , so we have the 2d tip, the 2d wilton and the 1m wilton tip.

These are the most popular tips for large rosettes and they work very well and are very quick once you learn how to make them. very quick to make and they have beautiful flowers, so here again I am going to use my same bag now that I have a double bag. I can easily take it out and change the tips with no problem so I'm going to cut my bag a little bigger here because the tip is a lot bigger than what I was using and I'm going to go ahead and stick my tip in the bag and put my frosting in there too .

Well, here I have my 1 m tip. that I'm going to use and I'm going to show you the hanging flowers and the rosettes that come out of them, so once again I want to make sure that my bag and my tip are perpendicular to my surface and I'm just going to put pressure, release the pressure of the bag and lift and once again perpendicularly put pressure, release the pressure with your hand and lift upwards. You can see these are pretty simple, just a larger version of what we had before, okay? now we're going to make our rosettes and these are going to be larger rosettes so again perpendicularly pick up the icing a little bit and roll it around your center and I'm going to overlap in my center as you can see I have a piece of icing .

I left it there, so I'm going to wipe it off with a damp paper towel. Here to start cleaning, I don't touch the tip down, I just place it right on my surface so you can see that I'm slowly building up the frosting. I'm applying pressure wrapping it on top of the center, overlapping it, release the pressure and remove the frosting slowly and that will give you that clean edge, so again I'm going to show it to you here one more time, so Let's build up the center a little bit and then keep applying pressure and overlap the center and that will give you that nice rosette, release the pressure and slowly wrap it around now if it doesn't overlap and go around it. it doesn't leave you as tight and clean as a rosette, it's not my favorite look, I prefer the overlay look method and again I'll show you one more time, if you don't overlay it, it doesn't have a clean type. rosette looking is not bad, but I prefer to layer it, it looks much cleaner, so now I'm going to change the tips and I'm going to use the 2d tip, which is the closed star tip, another very popular tip as well and I'm just going to change my bags here easily and I just want to show you the difference between the open and closed star tip so the fallen flowers look a little different, come out more flowy and then the centers are a little different. a little more open and here are the rosettes, the same idea creates pressure in the middle and they overlap and you can see that they are very similar just a little more fluid, so now do it in a biscuit again perpendicular which we don't want to do it at a right angle up and down and I'm going to build up the frosting in the middle without touching the cookie and wrap it around, you know, overlapping my frosting, pull and release the pressure and pull and that's it once again. build it in the middle of the overlap, release the pressure and pull and then you can clean up the edge with the tracer if you need to, um, just to stick that tip in there and there goes a beautiful rosette on your cookie next What we're going to do is work with the tips of the petals, so again I want some stiff royal icing.

You can see here, it has stiff spikes, it holds its shape and we're going to start with the tips of the smaller petals, so again I want to cut my bag to make sure it fits my tip correctly. Here I'm going to use the wilton 101 tip, it's a petal tip and a smaller petal tip so I'm going to show you what kind of flowers you can make with this so you can see here on the tip there's a thin side and there's a fat side that is teardrop shaped and when we make flowers it is very important that their thin side or their narrow side is the side that points outwards and their fat side The thicker side is always towards the center of the flower, so you can see here if I draw a straight line, there's kind of a rounded edge and kind of a pointy edge that's hard to see in the video, but that's what I'm talking about. when we have the fat uh on the thin side of the teardrop tip, so here you can see, I'm slowly going to make a u with the tip of my pipe, so I'm going to go like a rainbow, go around, put pressure, go up and go back down always pressing until you finish the u, so you can practice with the tip just to feel it and feel if you turn your bag a little bit, if you just go up and down, what kind of pedals it has.

I'm going to give you a little piece of parchment paper here and I'm going to press a little bit again the thick side the thick side faces in to the center of my flower I start in the middle go up turn the paper and go down I'm applying constant pressure, even pressure for each petal until I stop at the end and remove the bag and again on another sheet of paper, I'll show you again, so press the fat sides in the middle and turn. the paper instead of turning my bag, it's easier to turn your cookie or your piece of paper here and again, just apply even pressure and here I'm really overlapping, so I start under the last petal and go up, starting from the bottom and then finish at the top to give you a different flower look, so those last two were flatter flowers and I'll show you how to make a more 3D or taller flower, so again we start our base the same way as you just made your petals. here you press, you come out with the tip and you bring it back down, it doesn't have to be perfect at this point because we're going to put some more petals on top, so once you have your base layer, I'm going to Just fix it up a little bit with my type here and I'm going to start laying down my second layer, so again I'm going to make some petals, a little less than in my first round, and I'm going to continue Let's go and build the

leaves

and you can stop here or you can continue with another layer one or two sheets on top, so let's go to the cookie from time to time, we'll make our rainbow or the upside down U shape so that the fat part. of the tip will be inside, I'm going to place my tip more or less flat so that it's level against the cookie and, while I'm putting pressure on my pastry bag, I'm going to turn the cookie slightly and go back down, you want to build it up by making a kind of icing to that you don't have a hole between your petals, so if I make my you or my rainbow too wide, then I'll have some kind of spacewhat I'm going to do here is just clean the tip and I'm going to show you here, so when you press you can see that my bag is looking like a v. and you can make a very small one, so you just press a little bit, release it and move it away, and that gives you that final edge of the leaf or you can make you know bigger

leaves

if you put more pressure, put a little pressure take the pressure of the bag and pull the bag you can make wavy leaves by moving the bag up and down, it's very versatile, you know, the more pressure you put and the slower you move, the more waves you get things like that, so you can play by here.look I'm just putting a bunch of leaves in to feel how the leaves get thicker, thinner and longer and again you just touch, press and then release the pressure and when you quickly remove the bag you can see it leaves a small tip, so now I'm going to show you my darker frosting here, so I'm just going to cut a small regular one right on my bag, here just a little hole that I always make in the middle and I'll show you.

Sort of how to make different greens and this is like a pressure piping idea so basically what I'm doing is just putting pressure in one place and then pulling the bag down so the pressure pulls the bag up. down when you finish applying pressure. pipe and this will give you those type of vines and different types of leaves, so basically I put pressure and pull my bag down, put pressure, pull the bag down, you can curve them, you can shape them any way you want. and those kinds of things you can add to your roses and your greenery just to give it a little bit more depth, you can zoom in like it's here over and over again, it's simple, just press now in the same place to build that up. frosting like a dot and then pull down and here I'm just drawing a line so you can follow that guy to make it a little more spaced out, but it's always the same technique: you press and pull down, you can always go in with your scribe and fix things when you need to, we are not all perfect, I use my bunting a lot and again I can stack them on top of each other and make them bigger, the more pressure you put on the bigger your little petals your leaves will be, so yes you want something a little bit closer, you hold the bag a little bit more and put a little more pressure like that.

You can see the size here is a little bit bigger, so again you can play around. around and see what kind of techniques you like, you can use different techniques and you can see just with a bag in a bag without a tip, I've done all that so here I have a cookie cutter or a cookie that I cut out, no I actually have a floral cookie cutter, I think it's Mr. and Mrs. Bobby's cutters plate and it's kind of a different shape, so I thought it would be perfect to, you know, put my leaves and flowers on it, okay? ? that I am content with my vines and my little greenery.

I'm going to make a little rosette here, so again put the frosting in the middle and just wrap it around. Well now we are at the end of the video and I really hope that the boys try to make flowers, they look a lot more complicated than they are and it takes a little practice, but I really hope that they give it a try. Let me know how it goes in the comments and if you have any questions, let me know. I know it too and I hope to see you all in the next tutorial. Thanks for watching them.