Cake Design Tutorial: How to Decorate Cupcakes Like a Pro

Learn how to decorate cupcakes with lettering and leaves using colored buttercream and piping bags

Everyone loves a cupcake, but even more so when they’re decorated beautifully to look like unique works of art. Whether decorated to celebrate an occasion, or with a written greeting, cupcakes can be the sweetest of gestures.

Kate Kim (@katekim) is a professional baker and cake designer living in London. In 2017, she won the Bronze award at the biggest cake decoration competition in the world, Cake International. Here, she talks through how to decorate your cupcake with lettering and a leaf and berry border.

How to Decorate Cupcakes like a Professional:

You’ll need:

- Plain buttercream
- Food coloring
- 4 pots for your different colored icing
- Tooth picks
- Piping bags with a selection of nozzle sizes (for writing a size 1)

1. In order to make the different colored icing, you need to have a base color ready to add the different colors to. Kate adds a small amount of different food coloring to each individual pot of plain buttercream, in order to make 4 different colors. You can make your colors as dark or as light as you like, but it’s best to add small amounts at a time, and build up the color from there until you reach the desired shade.

2. Once you’ve got the colors made up, it’s time to add them to your cupcake using piping bags. Fill your piping bags each with an individual color. The icing will melt quickly, so Kate recommends using heat transfer gloves when handling the piping bags.

3. Push the icing down to the bottom of your piping bag and hold the bag closed so that it doesn’t come out of the top when you squeeze your bag to pipe. Select the nozzle for the piping bag for the shape you’d like to create. For example, Kate uses a number 1 nozzle for a thinner, more controlled line for lettering, and a 5 tip nozzle with a green icing to create a leaf shape.

4. Using one hand to hold the piping bag and write or draw icing with, use the other hand to support the decorating hand and keep it steady. When writing with a piping bag, apply even pressure.

5. After you’ve created the writing in the center of the cupcake, you can add decoration to the outside of it. Kate adds leaves and berries on hers by adding pale and medium shade leaf strokes with the piping back, varying the up and down stroke as she does it to add texture and depth to the leaves. She also varies the berry colors, adding both orange and red dots over the tops of the leaves for a final look. Once you’ve added the final touches to your cupcake, it’s ready to be eaten - enjoy!

Enjoyed this tutorial? Check out Kate Kim's course Decorative Buttercream Flowers for Cake Design and learn how to make perfectly textured buttercream flowers to arrange on a five-inch cake.

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