Buttercream Flowers & Borders with Petal and Leaf Tips | Tutorial
Chef Alan TetreaultIn this tutorial: What You'll Need · Leaf Techniques · Borders with Petal Tips · Flowers · Making Flowers Ahead · Applying to Cupcakes & Cakes
Petal tips aren't just for roses. In this comprehensive tutorial, Chef Alan Tetreault of Global Sugar Art shows you everything you can do with petal and leaf tips — from basic leaves and fern borders to rosebuds, sweet peas, primroses, daisies, chrysanthemums, and full-blown roses in multiple sizes. This is part of the Buttercream Basics series and builds on the techniques from the star tips and string work videos.
📌 This is part of the Buttercream Basics series: Part 1 – Baking the Cake from Scratch · Part 2 – Making Buttercream Icing · Part 3 – Piping with Star Tips · Part 4 – String Work · Part 5 – Petal & Leaf Tips (you're here) · Part 6 – Advanced Borders
What You'll Need
- Petal tips: #101, #101s, #102, #103, #104, and #406 (for giant cupcake roses)
- Leaf tips: #65, #67, or #70
- Specialty tip: #61 (C-shaped, for curled rose petals) and #81 (half-moon, for chrysanthemums)
- Round tips: #3 (for scrolls and tendrils)
- Buttercream icing — medium to firm consistency (varies by technique; see notes below)
- Royal icing — for flowers you want to make ahead and store
- Flower nails — #7 or #9
- Parchment paper or wax paper squares
- Small craft scissors — for transferring roses
- Paste or gel food coloring — for brush striping
- Flower formers (or cut a cardboard paper towel tube in half)
- Palette knife — for fixing leaf points
Part 1: Leaf Techniques
↪ Basic Leaves
Using a #67 leaf tip at a 45° angle:
- Squeeze to build up pressure — the icing will ruffle.
- Relax the pressure and pull away for a pointed tip.
💡 The "lizard tongue" problem: If the tip of your leaf splits, your icing is too stiff. Too soft, and the leaf lies flat. Chef Alan's solution: use medium consistency icing, then pull the split points together with a palette knife or the tip itself after piping.
💡 Hot hands help here. Warm hands soften the icing in the bag — for once, that's actually an advantage. By the time the bag is half-empty, your leaf points may be coming out perfectly on their own.
↪ Curved Leaves
Same technique, but arc your hand in one direction as you pipe. Great for framing flowers.
↪ Leaf Scroll Border
- Pipe a scroll pattern using a #3 round tip.
- Add leaves pulling out from each scroll point using the leaf tip.
- Finish with tendrils piped in a circular motion with the round tip.
↪ Fern Border
- Pipe a straight green line as a stem.
- Starting at the base: squeeze, release, lift — centering each leaf over the stem.
- Move up a few millimeters and repeat, making each leaf slightly smaller as you approach the top.
↪ Leaf Ribbon Border
A simple up-and-down motion with the leaf tip — looks like a ruffled ribbon. Works beautifully on the sides of a cake.
Part 2: Borders with Petal Tips
↪ Straight Ribbon Border
Using a #104 petal tip at 45° — pipe overlapping shells in a straight line. Produces a smooth, elegant ribbon effect.
↪ Rhythm Ribbon Border
Three shells, then a straight pull. Repeat: three shells, straight pull.
↪ Circular Rhythm Border (for cake tops)
The large end of the tip always faces the center of the cake. Pipe three small shells, then a loop. Repeat around the circumference. Beautiful for girls' birthday cakes.
↪ Ruffle Border
The large end of the tip faces up (toward the top of the cake). Simple up-and-down motion — keep the small end angled slightly outward to get a nice cup in the ruffle.
Double ruffle variation: Pipe the first layer with a #104, then go over it with a #102 for a layered look.
Part 3: Flowers
↪ Rosebuds
Using a #104 tip at 45°, with the wide end down:
- Pivot right — pivot left — pivot right — then pull back, relaxing pressure.
The key word is pivot. If you just go back and forth without pivoting, you get a flat, square shape instead of a tight, tapered bud.
↪ Half Roses
Start with a rosebud, then add one petal on each side by placing the tip down, lifting, and arcing around.
↪ Sweet Peas
Method 1 (modern): Touch the icing to the surface, lift up while squeezing, then pull back. Repeat at slight angles to the left and right. Keep the back tapered and tight.
Method 2 (old-fashioned): First pipe a flat half-round petal as a base, then pipe the sweet pea on top of it.
↪ Primroses
Made on a flower nail with parchment paper squares. Wide end of the tip in the center.
- Squeeze outward to form a petal, then pull back to center. Keep the thin end slightly raised for a cupped shape.
- Make 5–6 evenly spaced petals.
- Finish with 5–6 small yellow dots in the center.
💡 Best made with royal icing. Pipe them on paper, let them dry on flower formers (or halved cardboard tubes), and store indefinitely in a cool, dark place.
💡 Buttercream shortcut: Make them in buttercream, freeze on the paper, and peel off while still frozen. Place on the cake immediately — they'll hold their shape as they thaw.
↪ Daisies
On a flower nail. Wide end of the tip faces outward (opposite of the primrose). Start from the outside and pull in toward the center.
- Flat angle = wide petals
- Steeper angle = narrow petals
💡 Relax the pressure as you reach the center — otherwise the middle gets cluttered and messy.
Daisies are very thin and don't transfer well from frozen. Best made with royal icing and dried.
↪ Full Roses
Chef Alan has a separate dedicated rose tutorial, but covers his center-building technique here:
- Build a tall, solid base by squeezing icing back and forth on the nail, then piping around the outside.
- Create the center curl — hold the tip straight up, wide end down, and twirl the nail while squeezing gently. Bring the petal all the way down to anchor it.
- Add 3 petals (first layer), 5 petals (second layer), 7 petals (third layer).
The petal count pattern: 3 → 5 → 7. Each layer adds two more.
Tip #61 (the C-shaped tip) produces petals that curl outward, giving a different look than the standard flat petals from a #104.
↪ Giant Cupcake Rose
Using a #406 tip (not 407 — Chef Alan corrects himself in the video). Same method as a standard rose but scaled up, with an extra row of 7–9 petals at the base. Transfer to a cupcake with scissors.
↪ Chrysanthemums
Using a #81 tip (a half-moon shape). The rounded side faces down.
- Brush-stripe the bag with burgundy or copper paste food coloring for a two-tone effect.
- Build a mound of icing on the nail.
- Starting at the base, press petals into the mound, pulling outward about ⅜–½ inch. Work in rows, angling the bag more vertically with each row.
- Finish at the top with a few short petals squeezed straight up.
💡 Best fall color combos: Brush-stripe with moss green + burgundy for a gorgeous mix of greens, reds, and golds.
Making Flowers Ahead of Time
- Royal icing flowers → pipe on parchment, let dry completely, store in a box in a cool, dry, dark place. They last months.
- Buttercream flowers → pipe on parchment, freeze, then peel off while frozen and place directly on the cake.
Chef Alan ran a bakery where they made thousands of royal icing flowers during downtime — ready to grab whenever a cake order came in.
Applying Flowers to Cupcakes and Cakes
Don't just think "cake." The same borders and flowers work on cupcakes, cookies, and brownies. Chef Alan shows cupcakes decorated with techniques from across the entire Buttercream Basics series — lattice, shell borders, reverse shells, zigzag borders — each topped with a flower.
This tutorial is part of Global Sugar Art's library of free cake decorating videos by Chef Alan Tetreault. Browse all tutorials →
