For a Christmas cake you’d be proud to take to a family gathering at holiday time - think poinsettias. With these Christmas cake and how-to’s for piping butter cream poinsettias, you’ll have everybody from Aunt Millie to little cousin Albert, ooohing and aaahing over your confectionary achievement.

Want to have Santa’s elves beating a path to your door? Try your hand at these ideas for creating a delightful poinsettia Christmas cake.

• Create a special border with small piped buttercream poinsettias.
• Create a Christmas scene using poinsettias on your cake – maybe using them to form a snowwoman’s hat or design a poinsettia bouquet.
• Make your cake look like a wrapped Christmas present fashion a bow from poinsettias.
• Poinsettia wreaths are terrific for Christmas! Make one by piping overlapping borders of dark green leaves onto the top of your Christmas cake. On top of the wreath, pipe buttercream poinsettias spacing them well. With the same red icing, use a round tip, pipe a sprinkling of holly berries in between the flowers. Your Christmas message can be written in the center of the wreath
• Cascading poinsettias would be beautiful down the front of a stacked Christmas cake or Christmas wedding cake.
• How about a poinsettia cupcake bouquet (really a favorite with the elves!) Ice a large enough number of cupcakes to fill a tier cake stand. Decorate the top of each one with a buttercream poinsettia, then arrange them on the tier plates. Reserve the top tier for a vase of real (pesticide-free) poinsettias.

Here’s how to Pipe a Poinsettia

First, collect these items:

• 3 icing bags or parchment cones
• Leaf tips, numbers 352 and 366
• Batches of green, red and a small amount of yellow buttercream icing
• White frosted cake(s) or cupcakes. Snow-white buttercream makes an ideal background

How to Make a Buttercream Poinsettia

Since you’ll be piping these directly onto the cake, practice a few first - even though the technique is easy to learn.

1. Fit an icing bag with the #366 leaf tip, then fill it with red icing. When making the petals, squeeze and pull each one, using the same motions as you would for a leaf. With the widest ends of the petals facing the center, create five petals. If they don’t meet in the middle, that’s fine as you’ll be adding more.

2. Pipe an additional layer of petals - technically these are known as modified leaves or bracts - staggering them on top of the original layer. Pipe a few more in between the petals on the bottom layer if you need to.

3. Adding green petals behind the bottom layer, using tip #352, gives a more natural, Christmasy look.

4. Use a round tip #3 to pipe the yellow dots - the real flowers - in the center.

These great decorating tips came from “Cake Decorating Made Easy!" Here’s what one reader had to say about our Video Books:

For newbies, you will learn that cake

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Whangarei, Northland, New Zealand

And there you have it! With this terrific poinsettia Christmas cake, you’ve just started a new family tradition.