To do this easily you will need the correct piping tip, it should look like a thin tear drop.

You will also need royal icing or butter cream (this will be squishier in end result though) and a “flower tack”. A flower tack is a round piece of metal with a nail in the bottom, this is what you pipe the rose on to. I tried making my own or just using the bottom of a cup to pipe onto but it really is a pain in the butt so I would really suggest just spending the $4 and buying one or else you’ll probably have frustrating results like I did XD

Rose on the tack:

You hold the nail and spin it as you work making it easier to control the end result.

Ok so let’s get started. You want stiff royal icing but no so stiff it can’t be piped easily. Place a small square of baking paper on the flower tack. You can hold it in place with a little bit a of icing.

Pipe a big round lump onto the middle of the baking paper. This will determine the shape and height of the rose so make it fairly tall and big. You can see my icing was a little too dry for the middle section below so it showed cracks.

Holding the piping bag with the thin part of the tip upwards pipe a little circle on the top of the middle lump. This will form the bud of the rose. It’s much easier if you rotate the tack rather than trying to rotate the piping bag.

Ok let’s start making some petals. Make the first petal over the join in the middle bud. To make the petal, pipe with the thin side of the icing tip upwards in a large upside down U shape. The thin part of the tip will make the tip of the petal look feathered and more like a real petal so you shouldn’t have to do much work at all.

Add the next petal in the same way overlapping the end of the last petal.

You can see from the side that these petals are really quite high up on the middle ball. This is good because it leaves room for lots of petals.

Continue making petals around the outside in this same way, overlapping the previous one.

The more petals you make the more it will look like a rose. If you find that it’s melting a bit then you need to use thicker icing next time.

Looking good!

Keep going with the petals until the thick bottom of each petal is touching the baking paper. You can keep going to make it huge but this is a nice size.

Once you’re done, remove the baking paper from the tack and leave the roses to dry.

And that’s it! It sounds really complicated but once you understand the basic motion of making a petal you can do these really quickly. After some practice, a rose like this takes me around 1-2 minutes.

Cuuuute! Learning how to do these yourself is great because you can match the colours to whatever you’re making perfectly as well as saving money from buying them pre-made.

Super happy that I can do these now! Let me know if you give it a try!