I’ve got an exciting review for you today! It seems everyone and they grandmother has seen or knows about these Instant Flower Nozzles. Perfect flowers in one easy step! Needless to say, I was rather excited to try them out.
Iced Jems sells these in a set of 7 and they come adorable packaged in this cute pink slide out box with rainbow plastic separating them. This alone could sit on my shelf as a decoration quite happily!
I baked some vanilla cupcakes (my recipe can be found on my Cupcake Conundrum blog post here) in red and white Iced Jems Baking Cups (naturally…) and set to work making my buttercream.
I normally make quite a soft buttercream to use inside cakes but for cupcake piping I usually make a firmer version. Having spoken to Jemma from Iced Jems, she told me to use a 1:2 ratio to make my buttercream so I mixed 250g butter to 500g icing sugar. I was also told for best results, not to add water or milk as this will make it soft and that temperature not liquid, will make the right consistency.
I made up my buttercream and it was rather solid. I’m blaming the cold British weather!! So I popped it in the microwave on the defrost setting for 10 seconds and it worked a treat. I then separated this into 7 bowls ready for me to colour.
The nozzles are larger than your average, so I found disposable piping bags the way to go here.
I found this handy tip on Jemma’s website;
When piping onto a cupcake, simply spread a thin layer of buttercream over the top of your cupcake, then pipe the flowers on top. This will help the buttercream flowers to stick down and not come away with crumbs.
So, that’s exactly what I did!
As with all cupcake piping, I found it was easier to hold your piping bag directly over the top of the cupcake.
Again, I followed the instructions to the letter – You need to squeeze gently whilst your piping tip is nearly touching the cake surface, this will ensure the base of your flower sticks to the cake. Now continue to squeeze whilst lifting the piping bag upwards for about 2 seconds, then release the pressure and pull the bag away.
I’ll be honest, the first one didn’t go so well! I did get covered in red buttercream. Haha! BUT! Not to be deterred, I tried again. The second time was a lot easier. Practice, practice, practice!
I used all of the nozzles with different colours and these were my findings;
- Temperature of buttercream is key. At the start I was struggling a bit but it was due to my buttercream being too cold and therefore too hard to push out. A quick zap in the microwave on defrost sorted that!
- Darker colours don’t work as well. I used a very deep purple for one of the nozzles and I couldn’t see the definition of the petals very well.
- Mixed, light colours work beautifully! One bag had a slight mix of lilac and cream (mainly due to my hasty mixing) and this looked really nice. I think a deliberate mix of two or more colours really brings these to life.
- The roses are my favourites.
I like them! I think they are cute and add something a little special to the top of your cupcakes and cakes. A must-have for any baker! You can buy a set of 7 for just £28 on the Iced Jems website.
Have you used them? What do you think? Let me know your thoughts, either on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram!
Happy baking!
Britt xo