These Christmas cake ideas are inspired by the "Christmas Star" flower, the Poinsettia. With buttercream poinsettias, you can create beautiful Christmas wreathes on your cake or make the poinsettia the star of your cake. You’ll find a how-to and video sample in this article that will show you just how quick and easy these festive flowers are to make!

The Poinsettia makes a perfect decoration for a Christmas cake whether the cake is for a Christian gathering or a secular event. It’s a festive flower with Christmas colors, and in its native Mexico, the poinsettia, also known as the "Christmas Star" for its star-like form, is an important symbol of Navidad.

There’s a Mexican Christmas legend similar to our "Little Drummer Boy," story that features this pretty flower that blooms wild in the sub-tropics at Christmas time.

Americans often deck their halls with potted Poinsettia’s brought home from the supermarkets where they sell more than any other plant. Most of the world’s Poinsettias originated from California growers. We even have a National Poinsettia Day, December 12, to honor the U.S. ambassador to Mexico who introduced them here in 1828, Joel Poinsett.

Before we get started, here are some ideas for adorning your Christmas cakes with this very popular Christmas flower:

• Encircle your Christmas cake with a Poinsettia wreath. Pipe overlapping borders of dark green leaves for the main part of the wreath. Then add your buttercream Poinsettias. Finally using a round tip, pipe a few holly berries in the space between the flowers. Write your Christmas message in the center.

• Create top and bottom borders of smaller Poinsettias around your cake.

• Make the Poinsettia part of the design. For example, create a snowwoman’s hat with a Poinsettia or feature a bouquet of them.

• Create a Christmas cake to look like a wrapped package and use a large buttercream Poinsettia instead of a bow.

• Cascade Poinsettias down the front of a white buttercream iced, stacked cake.

• Bake and frost enough cupcakes to fill a tier cake stand. Pipe a poinsettia on top of each cupcake. Assemble, and arrange real Poinsettias (pesticide free) in a vase on the top tier. Or place a small cake on the top tier, decorated with an icing bouquet of the Christmas Stars.

Now, for your piping instructions!

Materials Needed for poinsettia Christmas Cakes

• Icing bags.
• Leaf tips, #352 and #366.
• Buttercream icing.
• Red, green and yellow food coloring
• The cake (or cupcakes)! The buttercream poinsettias look especially Christmassy on a snow-white frosting or icing. They’re also pretty on chocolate or pale yellow buttercream.

How to Pipe a Buttercream Poinsettia

Since you will be piping these directly on the cake, practice first – they’re so easy to make, you won’t need to practice for long.

1. With the #366 leaf tip and red icing, squeeze and pull out each petal. Create five petals with the wider ends meeting in the center (don’t worry if there’s a space in the center because you’ll be adding more).

2. Stagger another layer of petals (technically known as bracts or modified leaves) on top of the first layer. Depending on the look you want, you may want to pipe a few more in between the petals on the bottom layer.

3. Then add some of the immature, green petals behind the bottom layer, using tip #352. This creates a more natural effect, adds the symbolic evergreen Christmas color, and is a nice contrast for the red.

4. Finally, pipe the "real flowers" in the center, using round tip #3 and yellow icing.

Variations: You can make smaller Poinsettias, such as for borders, by using the #352 leaf tip.

Click here to watch the Poinsettia Video

This poinsettia how-to and sample video are from "Cake Decorating Made Easy!". Here’s what one reader had to say about our Video Books:

"Anyone can learn to bake and decorate delicious and beautiful cakes by reading the material, viewing the videos, and practicing what is demonstrated in the videos."

Cecile Kennedy, Ocala, FL

Here’s one more Christmas Cake tip! When you mix your red icing, don’t use liquid food coloring. The amount needed to bring white icing to a deep red will add a bitter taste (due to Red 3 in the coloring), so here’s what you can do to battle the bitter:

• Use more concentrated forms of color – gel, paste and powder colorings are all more intense than liquid. These are found in specialty stores, large crafts stores, such as Michaels, and online right here. www.CandylandCrafts.com

• Color your icing first with a natural, red substance such as pomegranate juice, and then you won’t need as much food coloring.