Swirl Drop Flowers

I used some birthday money (thanks, Mom!) to buy myself cake decorating supplies in the form of a Wilton Decorating Basics Student Kit that included 12 decorating tips, 4 standard couplers, 2 featherweight bags, 6 disposable bags, 6 parchment triangles, 1 flower nail, 1 cupcake nail, 1 decorator brush, 12 flower template stickers, 1 spatula, and a practice board with stand and patterns. I think it was a pretty good deal.

I was so excited to get it! So the week it arrived, I made some sugar cookies and decorated them with swirl drop flowers. (PS: When does making cookies with kids become fun? Because I sure find it frustrating, but Charlie loves helping.) I liked the idea of a small project to start practicing; I didn't want to try tackling an entire cake right off the bat. I think I chose well.

It was fun. And they turned out pretty pretty if I do say so myself. I did run into a snag that I was concerned would be a bigger problem then it turned out to be: the tip to make the swirl drop flowers (Wilton 2D) requires a large coupler, and my kit only came with standard couplers. Weird, right? I was too excited to be deterred, so I just put the tip in the bag without any coupler. It worked. Not ideal, but successful. I definitely prefer how the coupler holds the tip in place, so I will be getting one eventually.

Since I had never made sugar flowers before, I wasn't sure what kind of frosting to use. I was reluctant to try royal icing because I've never used it before and I didn't have the ingredients. I've worked with buttercream before, so I used a Wilton buttercream frosting recipe I found online. As some of the comments suggested, I used all butter instead of half butter and half shortening. I wasn't sure about consistency, but I knew I didn't want it too thin, so I only added 1 T of milk instead of 2. The frosting turned out delicious! And while I'm no expert on the perfect consistency to make sugar flowers, I think it worked out really well. But I am definitely interested in suggestions!

To make the flowers, you rotate your wrist and squeeze out frosting at the same time. It's only a little tricky. When I went slow, more turned out wonky than almost perfect. But when I got in a groove and went a little quicker, it seemed more turned out almost perfect than wonky. I don't know; what's the best way to establish muscle memory? The thing I need to do better next time is to stop squeezing before I pull the frosting away. You can see that some of the flowers are a bit spiky, and I think I jumped the gun and pulled the frosting away before I stopped squeezing.

Now, as I was looking stuff up online to get ready for this attempt, I happened upon one of the most amazing frosting tricks ever! I'm serious. It's genius. If you don't believe me, check out this video--the good part starts after the first minute:

I tried it with this project, and using this trick made cleaning the frosting bag almost non-existent! I only had to clean a tiny bit of frosting out of the tip of the bag. It was so quick. I will do this from now on. (And I think I'll store my leftover frosting wrapped up in plastic wrap in the fridge or freezer for future use--it'll just need to get to room temp and then it's ready to go!) I had been debating the whole reusable vs. disposable frosting bag scenario. After all, the disposable ones are super convenient--and I REALLY like things to be easy. But why continuously pay money for frosting bags? This new trick has solidified my choice: reusable. Yes, the trick requires some plastic wrap, but it's not like the stuff is expensive. I think it's a perfect compromise.