I'm fairly new to the cake decorating scene (5 yrs.) and I'm wondering if anyone has a great technique for piping butterfiles that I might not know about? I know wilton.com usually has different project ideas but couldn't find what I was looking for there.

Here's the skinny: I'm doing 200 cupcakes as a donation to my children's school ladies' night out - these will be the dessert for the evening. So, I want them to be beautiful and delicious, while minimizing cost and time (since I have to do 200+ and won't be compensated). The theme is butterflies and I was asked to do a simple butterfly as the cupcake topper.

I have considered doing them in colorflow like the previous wilton's Course 2 butterflies, but really, I'm leaning more towards a piped technique done in royal - anyone have any suggestions, or ideas from previous publications, etc.?

Did I mention this is for Saturday evening?

I tend to take on projects like this and then get way too complicated, but what I would do is pipe the wings a solid base color for the wing background. Then you could take and pipe different simple designs overtop of them. 200 Cuppies is alot to take on, good luck!!

what about FBCT? I have never done it, but from what I gather on here it is not very time consuming. Well .. at least to do a few it is not, 200 will be time consuming, but possibly less than colorflow? Not sure .. as I have not done either before. Well maybe I should have just lurked and not replied LOL

You could pipe in chocolate, mold fondant or gumpaste, or do them in gelatin. The last two, of course, aren't piped. Another method is to use wafer paper and either draw with edible markers or print with ei printer.

The easiest thing for me, I would use fondant and gum paste mix. Use a butterfly cutter and let it dry with the wings up. Then place it on the cup cake. Probably nothing like you want to do. As far as piping, I really wouldn't know an easy way. Maybe draw two hearts - points together with an oval in the center and then pipe antennas (use royal icing).

For 200 I could say the easiest would be fondant cut-outs. on those you can pipe some simple designs and you can knock them out assembly line style: First cut out all the shapes, those go through with the first color and pipe the body and antennae, then go back with subsequent colors and pipe some dots/lines/squiggles etc. You can do these as far ahead of time as you want and once they are dry you can store them in a container until you need them.

Thanks everyone for all of the ideas. I hadn't really considered the fondant/gumpaste method because I thought it'd be too tedious/take too long...if I do this, what should I dry the wings on so they'll look right? Would you do fondant only, gumpaste only, or 50/50?

I swear I had seen something like Lucks' Dec-ons or a similar brand/ product that was just piped butterflies, simple but cute - now I can't find them online But it was simple enough that I could knock them out pretty fast with royal, and maybe just do all one or two colors, simple without too much details...let me know if you know what I'm talking about or find it! thanks!

You could do just fondant or fondant with a little cmc/tylose. Gumpaste isn't necessary.

If you have foam egg crate type padding you can rest the butterflies on that to give the wings "movement" and allow each one to dry a little differently. If you don't have any, you can pour corn starch in a sheet pan and make indentations all over the pan, and lay the cut outs on that to dry, for the same effect.