{Tutorial} How to make grass on cupcakes

The 'grass' is one of the cutest icing effects and can be used for any theme... from enchanted gardens and teddy bear picnics to under the sea!

Here is the low down on the 'grass' nozzles... and how to use them.

Nozzles that give you the grass effect are called multi opening nozzles. There are a few different sizes by various brand names such as Wilton and Ateco. I have the Ateco 234 and Wilton 233. Ateco will give you a bigger grass than the Wilton. But using the Wilton nozzle to pipe lots of grass can give you a very sore wrist!

To get a really good grass effect from either of these nozzles you have to have really really smooth icing. Use icing mixture, which is a blend of icing sugar and corn flour.  The corn flour stops the icing sugar sticking together, so you always get super smooth icing. 

If you need gluten free products, using pure icing sugar but sift it really well, at least once.

Both icing sugar and icing mixture can be used in our perfect buttercream recipe!

Bake your cupcakes just below the cupcake case. The pink case looks bigger than it actually is... it is only about 3mm from the top of the case to the cake. The case holds the grass in and stops it falling off the cupcake. 

Start on the outside and work your way around. Hold the nozzle just about the cake and squeeze, as you feel it hit the cake, gently lift the icing bag up as you keep squeezing, then stop squeezing and pull off. The grass should stand upright. you can see the first grass, it's shorter. I stopped squeezing too early.

 Here are the two cupcakes I did, both with different nozzles. You get totally different effects. The big Ateco gives you really lush thick grass, like a lawn that needs to be mowed...perfect for a teddy bears picnic!  The Wilton gives you smaller neater grass perfect for an enchanted garden. I used the Wilton 234 for the original enchanted garden cupcakes. Hope this is helpful! Happy decorating!