The flowers of the butterfly bush, as buddleia is also known, are magnets for butterflies and hummingbirds. The drooping flower-spikes are honey-scented and come in shades of blue, pink, white, red and include some very attractive bi-coloured blooms.
1. Pipe a curved guide line to determine how long you want the flower-spike to be. Fill a piping bag with blue buttercream and position the nozzle to one side of the guide at a 20 to 30 degree angle.
2. Pipe a short fan-shaped petal (see Basic Petal Strokes) to make the bottom and then another on top of it to create a flower.
3. Repeat the process to pipe all the flowers on one side of the guide line.
4. Repeat to pipe all the flowers on the other side, leaving a small gap up the centre of the flower-spike.
5. Fill the gap with an upright wavy petal (see Basic Petal Strokes) to give volume in the centre of the flower-spike. Then pipe flowers, as before, up the centre to cover the upright wavy petal.
6. Use orange buttercream in a bag with a small hole at the tip to pipe the very short spikes in the centre of each flower.