Cupcake Video Tutorial-The Basics!
In this video, you will learn the basics of how to make beautiful cupcakes!
We'll show you how to create swirls of frosting with various tips, simple flowers, how to stripe the bag, how to create an "icing plug" for multi-toned piping, how to inject your cupcakes with fillings, and more!
Table of Contents
Materials for Cupcake Decorating
We used our Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream Frosting Recipe- our Classic Vanilla Buttercream is a great choice also!
In the video, I am using the following piping tips:
Wilton2D or 1M for the ridged swirl or buttercream rose swirls
Wilton 21 for a smaller ridged swirl/design
Ateco 808- huge round tip (for smooth swirls or a quick way to frost your cupcake before smoothing)
Wilton 12- Medium sized round tip (same use as above)
104 petal/ruffle tip
Viva Paper Towel (the smoothing technique that we demonstrated used this brand of paper towel which has no quilting or impressions).
For even more on the Viva Paper Towel Method of Smoothing (especially for decorating cakes rather than cupcakes) check out our free video: Viva Paper Towel Method of Smoothing
Favorite Cupcake Recipes
We have several great cupcake recipes on our site! Some of our favorites are chocolate cupcakes, lemon cupcakes, vanilla cupcakes and Oreo cupcakes! But there are so many more that we would love to share with you
Enjoy the Video!
Thanks for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy this cake decorating tutorial and find some techniques you'd like to try! Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below!
If you are looking for more videos on buttercream piping techniques, check out our videos on How to Pipe with a Star Tip, How to Pipe with Ruffle & Petal Tips, and How to Pipe with Round Piping Tips!
Very lovely cupcakes I learned a lot today.
Which recipe did you use for your cupcakes? I have been trying out some scratch recipes and they are just not producing the dome effect that I prefer. Yours are absolutely lovely!
Hi Jenitta, we used the White Cake recipe in the recipe section. It uses a cake mix with some added ingredients. It seems to us that scratch cake recipes do not dome as high as cake mix recipes. In the video Melissa shows examples of the dome effect that you can get by raising your oven temperature for a short period during baking...........that example starts at about one minute 50 seconds into the video.
are all the dusts: luster dust, disco dust, petal dust edible?
Hi Jennifer--it's best to check the label before purchasing because there is some variation in labeling from brand to brand. You'll find that most dusts say non-toxic. Same with disco and pixie dusts---"non-toxic" or for decorative use only/non-toxic. I'm sitting here with my box of dusts & most say non-toxic but none say edible.
I mainly use dusts on accents that will not be eaten---flowers, bows, modeled figures, etc., although I use pixie or disco dust sparingly on cakes for shimmer. That is up to the decorator's discretion.
Silver & Gold Highlighter dusts will give you an extremely metallic finish...and these are categorized on the label as non-edible. So, for instance if you were doing a cake with gum paste or fondant jewelry and used silver or gold highlighter, you would make sure to tell your customer not to eat them.
Thank you for clearing that for me! :)
I am planning on doing just a basic swirl for some chocolate cupcakes. I want a frosting that will taste great ut with just enough body to "hold" the swirl design. Which chocolate frosting would you recommend?
Hi Amy---I use our chocolate "classic" buttercream recipe most often when I need a good chocolate frosting---
https://www.mycakeschool.com/recipes-tutorials/classic-chocolate-buttercream/comment-page-1/#comment-15118
Our "fluffy" chocolate frosting is another option, which is similar to the other but is a little fluffier and contains shortening--
It sounds like you are looking for something with an even softer consistency though--you may want to do a search for chocolate swiss meringue buttercream. We don't have recipe on this on our site yet (we have vanilla swiss meringue)---this is a non-crusting recipe which may be closer to what you are going for.
Good luck!!
I agree the cupcake liners from the grocery store do not work good. Where do you get the liners that you have in the video?
Great tutorial, I loved your two toned icing! I'm going to try that this week.
Thanks for this video, have lovely flat cupcakes cooking atm :)
Your videos are so good. Very detailed and relaxing to watch. You make it all look so easy.