Red Icing

• Poinsettia flowers are generally red. A rich, red color is nearly impossible to reproduce in icing with liquid food coloring, and you may not be able to deepen the shade past a dark pink. Instead of adding large amounts of liquid red food coloring to your icing—which may thin the icing and make it difficult to work with—try red paste food coloring. Paste food coloring will not water down your icing and can produce much deeper and richer colors than liquid food coloring. Start with a small amount and add a little at a time until your icing is the perfect red shade to create a poinsettia flower.

Gum Paste Poinsettia

• Gum paste is an edible substance, similar in texture to a stiff clay, that is used to create cake decorations. You can purchase ready-made gum paste at craft or cake-decorating stores. Tint the gum paste with paste food coloring, then roll it out. Poinsettia petals are actually shaped like leaves, if you look at them closely. Use a leaf cookie cutter to cut poinsettia petals out of red gum paste, then stack them together to form a poinsettia. Cut larger leaf shapes out of green gum paste to form leaves, and roll small pieces of yellow gum paste into balls to create the center of the flower.

Piping Technique

• Make a poinsettia flower using royal icing shaped on a lily nail, a curved, plastic cup that allows you to pipe a flower with a curved bottom to give it a realistic look. Line the lily nail with a piece of aluminum foil to fill up the bottom of the nail and give your poinsettia a slight curve at the bottom. Use a leaf tip—which will achieve realistic-looking poinsettia petals—to pipe six petals onto the lily nail. Add six smaller poinsettia petals on top, piping the petals so they overlap the spaces between the bottom petals. Let the icing harden, then add a few dots of yellow icing to the center of your poinsettia flower.