(Post Updated 4th December 2025)
With the festive season fast approaching, are you looking for the perfect Christmas cupcakes? You’ve probably seen the shops start to fill with beautiful red poinsettia flowers, so I thought it would be fun for this weeks tutorial to show you how I pipe beautiful poinsettia cupcakes.
I’m piping red ones but they also come in red, pink and a beautiful creamy white, so it’s up to you the colour you choose!
Watch how to easy pipe poinsettia cupcakes
If you’d like to see how easy it is to pipe a poinsettia cupcake, you can watch my step by step video tutorial below. I show you what piping nozzles you’ll need and also how you can pipe them with no piping tips at all, making these the perfect cupcakes for beginners.
Starting with the perfect cupcake
For the cupcakes I’m using a batch of my yummy vanilla cupcakes (you can find the recipe here). When making your cupcakes you want quite a flat top. This really helps when piping your leaves as a level cupcake helps them hold their shape and stops them curving down is the dome is too large. If you do have a slight dome on the top you can just slice this off before you begin.
For the buttercream I’m using my American Buttercream recipe. It’s a soft buttercream that holds it’s shape which is perfect for piping buttercream flowers.
How to pipe a poinsettia cupcake and the nozzles you’ll need
For these cupcakes the piping tips you’re going to need are the #366 and the #352. These are both leaf piping tips, just in 2 different sizes. The larger of the 2 you’ll need for the green leaves at the back and the first row of read leaves.
Step 1: Start by piping 4 leaves onto the top of your cupcake in a dark green with the larger of the piping tips. The more pressure you add to your piping bag at the start the wider your leaves will be.
TOP TIP: I also move my piping bag back and forward slightly as I pipe the leaves to give them a little texture on the surface.
Step 2: Using the same piping tip, but with a bright red buttercream pipe a circle of red leaves over the top of the green leaves, leaving a gap in the center.
Step 3: You now need to use your smaller leaf piping tip, again with the red buttercream and pipe an inner row of leaves ontop of the larger leaves. Angle your piping bag up slightly to bring these leaves up, adding shape to your flower.
Step 4: For the centers you’ll need 2x number #2 piping nozzles. These have a tiny round hole at the end making them perfect to create the center buds. Create a small ball of buttercream with a light green and then with a yellow push the piping tip slightly into the green bud and apply pressure to fill the inside.
Follow these steps and this will give you the perfect buttercream poinsettia cupcakes.
Piping poinsettia cupcakes without any piping nozzles
If you’re new to piping cupcakes or don’t pipe flowers very often you might not have the right piping tips, but the great thing about poinsettias is you can still create the same effect with just a piping bag.
By cutting the same ‘V’ shape from your piping bag as the leaf tip you’re able to create a very similar buttercream leaf. In the tutorial I go through exactly how to cut each piping bag for the different sized leaves and also the buds.
My only advice if you are cutting your piping bags is to use quite a firm piping bag that will hold its shape at the tip. Here is a link to the ones I use on Amazon- https://amzn.to/3CYSkW7
I really love how pretty and festive these poinsettia cupcakes are and I think they would be perfect on their own or paired with some other festive cupcakes. Also don’t forget you can also make them in pink and cream too.
I really hope you will find this tutorial useful. If you haven’t already you can subscribe to my YouTube channel for more Free cake decorating video tutorials.
Tools I used
I have put a list below showing all the tools that I used throughout this video or if you would like to see all my favourite cake decorating you can visit my Amazon Storefront.
- Piping bags I use
- No. 366 Piping Nozzle
- No. 352 Piping Nozzle
- No. 2 Piping Nozzle
- Sugarflair Red Extra
- Sugarflair Green Extra
- Colour Splash Yellow
- Colour Splash Leaf Green
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Plus why not save this tutorial for later and pin it to Pinterest
