Sunflower Cupcakes - A Step by Step Tutorial

Simple sunflower cupcakes idea with buttercream sunflowers and chocolate sprinkle centers. Great cupcake idea for weddings, birthdays, and even baby showers!

Sunflower Cupcakes Idea for Weddings, Baby Showers and Birthdays

I have been wanting to make these pretty floral cupcakes for a very long time. And so I finally decided to make them last weekend and since they turned out so well, I decided to do a tutorial on them as well.

I made these cupcakes along with a set of daisy cupcakes. Since they too turned out pretty and nice, I’ve made a tutorial for them as well (click here for the tutorial).

With all the rage about buttercream flowers, I am sure these piped sunflower cupcakes tutorial will be useful. Instead of piping the sunflowers separately, freezing and then transferring them onto the cupcakes, I have decided to add the flowers directly onto my cupcakes. That way, no freezing was required, and the entire decorating could be completed pretty quickly too.

I used buttercream for the sunflowers. If you are not keen on working with buttercream, you can also make these in royal icing. Royal icing dries hard so if you use royal icing, you will get sweet crusted sunflowers for your cupcakes, which are not too bad, if you ask me.

Anyway, I have decided to use buttercream for this tutorial. Below are the all the supplies you would need and step by step picture tutorials for the buttercream sunflower cupcakes. There also a video at the end of the page so don’t forget to watch that too!

How to Make Sunflower Cupcakes

Main supplies for the cupcakes:

Cupcakes – I used my egg less chocolate cake recipe for the cupcakes and baked them in medium-sized white muffin cups. The cupcakes were slightly domed after baking, so I leveled them with a serrated knife for a flat top.
Buttercream – This was the main decorating medium. I used buttercream as a crumb coat as well as for the sunflower toppers on the cupcakes.
Wilton Golden yellow food color - for the sunflower petals
Wilton Juniper green food color.
Leaf piping tip number 352 + icing coupler .
Disposable piping bags .
Palette knife – this was used to apply the green base icing for the cupcakes before piping the sunflowers on.
Chocolate sprinkles - for the sunflower centers
Round cutter set .

And below is my step by step guide on how to make sunflower cupcakes:

I started by getting my cupcakes ready. By getting them ready, I mean leveling them with a knife (if they are domed after baking). It is a lot easier to pipe the sunflowers on a leveled cupcake surface rather than a domed one.

The green buttercream background

Next, I applied a thin coat of juniper green-tinted buttercream onto each cupcake. I did not apply much buttercream here, only to the extent that the entire cupcake surface is covered with a layer of the green icing and the surface is all level.
And I chose green as the base coat so that should there be any tiny gaps visible between the sunflower petals later, the green base is what you will see, and that sort of gives the flower a natural look as if there is a stem or leaf underneath.

Marking the lines for the sunflower petals

Once the base is done, I went on with the sunflower petals piping. For the sunflower petals, I used Wilton golden yellow food color to tint my buttercream to a pretty yellow hue, similar to that of the real sunflowers.
For the petals piping, I used the leaf tip number 352. It is a leaf tip, but since each of the sunflower petals look similar to leaves, this tip is the best for piping the buttercream sunflowers.

Sunflower Cupcake Piping Tip

Next, to guide me with perfectly round layers of petals, I used the help of 2 of my round cutters (or drinking glass or bottle or anything that is round and with a diameter that is slightly smaller than the cupcakes) and gently pressed them onto my green frosted cupcake tops. For perfectly centered sunflowers on the cupcake, I made sure that I placed the cutters as centered as possible on the cupcake.

A round cutter placed on a green icing covered cupcake

A circle marked on a green icing covered cupcake

The 2 cutters I used are of different sizes in diameter. The purpose is to create 2 layers of round marks on the top of the cupcakes, to guide the piping of the 2 layers of petals of the sunflowers. Again, if you don’t have a cutter, you can use a glass or bottle for this purpose.

Piping the yellow petals

The leaf tip number 352 is in the shape of an inverted “v”. Though it may seem natural to hold the piping bag with the flat side of the tip facing you, remember that for this tip, it is the narrow side that should be facing you, meaning you should not be seeing the inverted ‘v’ shape as you are piping the petals.
I started piping with one sunflower petal. I gently squeezed my piping bag and released as I pulled my tip away from the cupcake. Watch my video below for a better demonstration on how it is done.

Piping a yellow petal on a green cupcake

This was how the first sunflower petal looked like.

I continued piping the petals, one by one, using the first marked circle as the guide for placing my piping tip before piping out each of the petals.
Once the outer layer of sunflower petals were completed, I moved to the next layer of petals.

A layer of yellow petals on a green icing covered cupcake

I piped the petals one by one until the full circle was completed.

A green cupcake with 2 layers of yellow petals

Making the sunflower centers with chocolate sprinkles

Next, using a small spoon, I added chocolate sprinkles in the center of each cupcake. When doing this, I made sure to keep the sprinkles in the center and not drop any of them on the petals. And I also made sure that the sprinkles are sufficiently added such that none of the green icing at the base was visible. To hold the sprinkles in place, I pressed them lightly onto the cupcakes with the back of a spoon.
Another option for the sunflower centers is to use cookies. Simply place an Oreo cookie in the center instead of the chocolate sprinkles. If you are going to use Oreo as the flower center, make sure the diameter of the flower center matches the diameter of the cookies or you will end up with the green base icing visible after piping the petals.