I'm trying so hard to make a cupcake bouquet ... and I can't get a SINGLE decent looking flower piped on a cupcake!! WHAT the HECK could I possibly be doing wrong??? (rhetorical question ....... kind of)

Are you using b'cream? Is it too soft? Is it hot, humid in your area? Are you using your cupcake as a flower nail or piping them ahead & placing them on the cupcake?
My preference would be to pipe the flowers tonight and place them on the cupcakes in the a.m.
If you use my b'cream for air-dried flowers hyou will be able to handle them after a couple of hrs drying time.

I'm using pretty stiff b'cream ... but not so stiff that it's cracking. It's far from hot and humid ... I'm in MN and May seems to think it's March these days!!

I'm using the cupcake as the flowernail because I'm using jumbo cupcakes instead of standard and so I need large flowers.


Ahh well.... if nothing else, I've learned tonight that individual cups of applesauce that you can buy make a great practice surface for doing this ... if you screw up, you haven't messed up a cupcake and you can just wipe it off and start over HAHA

That is an excellent Idea! Using an applesauce cup !!! I will have to remember this one!

No matter what never give up. It may take a few tries but you'll get it.

Do you have a 1M tip? You can use that.

Just twist your wrist, but keep your arm and the cupcake in place (unmoving). Hope that makes sense. It really gives a nice rose effect. There are a few of them in the gallery - cupcake bouquets. I did one last year for the first time with great success - here's a link if you'd like to see the piping results:
http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=518493.

HTH