How to Pipe a Two-Toned Frosting Rose Recipe

Let me teach you how to pipe a beautiful two-toned frosting rose. Using my classic vanilla buttercream, stunning frosting roses are the simplest design to pipe on cakes and cupcakes.

I always used to be scared of creating beautiful decorations with frosting—it’s extremely intimidating. Do you feel the same way? Bored with my usual swirl and knife-swiped frosting looks, I began playing around with different piping tips. Once I started, I realized how easy it was. And, as I started becoming more familiar with piping designs, my confidence shot up. (When you get a little more confident, try piping sunflower cupcakes.) Practice, practice, practice!

Today, we’re focusing on a decorating technique that looks super fancy but is secretly so unbelievably easy—two-toned frosting roses. Using my favorite vanilla buttercream recipe, I’m showing you how to create stunning frosting roses for decorating cakes and cupcakes. I love using two colors of icing for ombre style roses. A frosting rose is the simplest design to pipe and I’m excited for you to try it!

Piping a Frosting Rose is Easier Than You Think

If you haven’t tried it yet, piping roses is easier than you imagine. And adding that second color to create a two-toned appearance really adds something special. It’s a gorgeous design for weddings, bridal showers, and baby showers. These frosting roses remind me of the flowers in my bridesmaids’ bouquets! Speaking of, these buttercream roses would look absolutely stunning on a homemade wedding cake.

Each frosting rose you pipe is completely unique with lighter and darker shades of each color. This makes it really fun and your baked goods have never looked more extraordinary! *Almost* too pretty to eat.

3 Tools You Need for Frosting Roses

These are affiliate links to products I personally use and love.

• Piping Tip: This is the most crucial tool for creating a frosting rose. You can use a 1M frosting tip or 2D frosting tip (closed star)—either tip will give you a rose pattern. And, the 1M frosting tip is one of five tips included in my how to use piping tips post!
• Food Coloring: For the two-toned look, choose any colors you like. I swear by using gel colors in frosting because liquid colors could alter the frosting’s consistency.. I like to keep some of the frosting white because the color + white really pops.. would be equally gorgeous.
• Piping Bag: Use a disposable or reusable piping bag in either 12-inch or 16-inch size.

. And getting two colors in the piping bag is nothing complicated either..

The first rose you pipe may be all one color frosting but after that one, you should begin to see both colors come out. Here’s the first of the batch I piped:

See a little white starting to come out at the top?

Then after I got going, here are the rest:

Best Buttercream To Use for Frosting Roses

None of this would be possible without a dependable vanilla frosting recipe. I include my favorite vanilla buttercream recipe below—it’s a lot like my original vanilla buttercream recipe, but we use a higher volume of ingredients so there’s more frosting that you can use to pipe these beautiful roses! You need a strong, sturdy vanilla frosting that will hold its rose shape. This one does the trick and tastes pretty incredible too. It’s enough for a 2 layer cake with some rose detail on top or for 24 cupcakes. You can always reduce the recipe down if you need less frosting.

You can also combine different frostings to make two-toned frosting. Try combining this vanilla buttercream with strawberry buttercream frosting for a natural pink and white rose! Or try a cinnamon-swirl combo like I do with snickerdoodle cupcakes.

For the cake, I used my favorite white cake recipe. For the cupcakes, I used my simply perfect vanilla cupcakes recipe.

I encourage you to try something new with these! Perhaps something that’s intimidated you in the past? I’m definitely one of those bakers who ran for the hills when it came to decorating cakes and cupcakes. But after discovering that it really isn’t that hard at all, my confidence got a little boost and now I can decorate a beautiful rose cake almost as fabulous as the professionals.

If you want to take your cupcakes to another new level, try filling them with your favorite jelly/jam, frosting, or dessert sauce before topping with the frosting rose.

See Your Two-Toned Frosting Roses!