Hand painted floral cupcake toppers tutorial

These hand-painted floral cupcake toppers by Dani Brazier using cocoa butter are surprisingly simple to create yet so effective – perfect for a Mother's Day treat!

Use edible dusts and cocoa butter to paint dainty flowers on toppers that look lovely on cupcakes – the perfect Mother’s Day gift!

Top tips!

  • Make sure you have some melted cocoa butter left (without any other colour being added) as this can be used to clean your brushes. Just dip in the cocoa butter and firmly wipe on a piece of kitchen roll before moving on to each colour.
  • The brush sizes are up to you. If you want smaller flowers or more detail, choose smaller brushes.

This tutorial originally featured in the March 2022 issue of Cake Decoration & Sugarcraft magazine, where you'll find even more gorgeous tutorials, a wealth of inspiration, advice and so much more!

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You will need

Edibles

  • 4 cupcakes
  • Cocoa butter
  • Yellow, green, pink, lavender and light blue dusting colours
  • 100g white sugarpaste
  • White sugarpaste (Sugarflair)
  • Buttercream
  • Grey food colouring

Equipment

  • Paintbrushes
  • Bowl and side plate
  • Piping bags
  • Palette knife
  • 1E nozzle

Instructions

Prepare the toppers

1
Take some grey sugarpaste (white mixed with a touch of grey food colouring) and roll to 5mm thick. Cut out a circle that is as wide as your cupcake. You will need one circle for each cupcake you are decorating.
2
Now take a side plate. Add on your dusts for your flowers and some white powder in the centre. I used a variety of colours from Sugarflair.
3
Add 4-5 cocoa butter pellets onto the plate. Put this plate on top of a bowl filled with boiling hot water and allow the cocoa butter to melt.
4
When mixing your colours, it is important to start with mixing cocoa butter with white to form an opaque colour. Then mix with the coloured dusts to make the shades you like.

Paint the roses

1
Make a rose by taking a small brush and painting on some green leaf colours. Just a pointy oval shape is enough. You can always add on different tones of the same colour to make it look a little more realistic.
2
Continue painting these mini leaves downwards and add on a thin line down the centre. Repeat these leaves on the other side of the circle.
3
Take a medium brush and light pink paint. Paint a rough circle shape in the middle. The nice thing about painting flowers is they tend to look better if they aren’t perfect.
4
Using some darker pink paint and a small brush, paint small curved lines starting small in the middle and gradually getting bigger as you go outwards. You can build up the colour very easily as it dries to bend colour and add tone.

Paint the daisies

1
Mix up some very light blue paint. With a medium brush, paint on petals using the tip of the brush for the edge of the petals. You really don’t need to be precise here.
2
Paint 5-6 petals per flower and add them all over the circle shape.
3
Paint on some yellow centres, then paint a few small leaves around each flower. I used a small brush for this.

Paint the blossoms

1
Now on another circle, paint very small leaves in random bunches all the way around the circle. Again, add some tone onto the leaves to help bring them to life.
2
Take variations of pink colour and a small brush to paint some blossoms. These are done by painting five tiny balls in a circle which form the petals. Add these all the way around, inbetween the leaves.
3
To finish off the blossoms, add in a dark pink centre to each flower.

Paint the lavender

1
Mix up some lavender paint. Here you need to paint small diagonal lines facing downwards for each flower. You can also add in some darker lavender paint for some tone.
2
Add three sprigs to the topper and finish off with three green stems to the flowers.

Finishing touches

1
Dollop some buttercream onto the top of a cupcake and use a pallet knife to flatten. Gently smoothing the buttercream out and remove the excess.
2
Pop the remaining buttercream in a piping bag with a 1E nozzle. Hold the piping bag tight and begin to squeeze out in the middle, then swirl the buttercream around.
3
Before the buttercream sets, lay your topper on the swirl. Repeat for each cupcake.

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