With a steady hand and some basic piping techniques, you can produce a veritable garden of edible succulents atop these green-tea-flavored cakes. Follow the decorating tips on page 192, practice on parchment before you get started, and use a flower nail (available at baking-supply stores) for best results.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, matcha, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

With an electric mixer on high speed, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Reduce speed to medium. Add egg and mix until just combined. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture in batches, alternating with milk, until combined.

Divide batter evenly among prepared cups, filling each about halfway. Bake, rotating tin halfway through, until cupcakes spring back to the touch and a cake tester comes out clean, about 16 minutes. Transfer tin to a wire rack to cool 5 minutes. Turn out cupcakes onto rack and let cool completely.

Divide buttercream into 5 bowls, reserving a few tablespoons of plain. Add gel-paste food coloring to bowls, a drop at a time, to achieve desired shades of mint green, leaf green, forest green, dark purple, and light brown. (Make more of the shade you’ll want to spread on the base of your cupcakes.)

Using a star tip, pipe vertical mounds of varying thickness to create cactus shapes. Use a very small round tip to pipe white dots along the sides or use a very small star tip to pipe a flower on top. To make the small individual succulents, pipe onto a flower nail and then transfer to the cupcake. See page 192 for decorating details. (Cupcakes are best eaten the day they are baked.)

To create the succulents shown opposite, follow the steps below. Use a flower nail (we used a #7), available at baking-supply stores. Adhere a small square of parchment to the surface of the flower nail with a dab of frosting. Pipe the design, then gently slide the parchment off the nail onto a baking sheet and refrigerate about 20 minutes. Use a small offset spatula to transfer the designs to the cupcakes. To make them two-toned in color, paint stripes of one color of buttercream along the inside of the piping bag, then fill the bag with a second color buttercream.

Using a small petal tip (such as #104), squeeze the bag gently and pull up slowly to make an acorn shape on top of the parchment. Holding the tip against the point of the acorn, wide end down and the narrow end angled in toward the acorn’s center, pipe a wide strip as you turn the nail, enrobing the top completely. Continue turning the nail, making longer petals that overlap.

Using a medium petal tip (such as #125), pipe a basic petal: Hold the bag at a 45-degree angle to the surface, with the tip’s wide end down and the narrow end pointed away slightly to the left. Move the tip forward and back again while you pivot the narrow end to the right, creating a long fan-shaped petal. Pipe additional petals, overlapping each one slightly. Using the same petal technique, pipe smaller petals.

Using a U-shaped petal tip (such as #80 or #81), pipe a dot about ½ inch in diameter to form the base. Hold the bag at a 45-degree angle against the edge of the dot, with the tip’s U shape facing up. Apply pressure, squeezing the bag, while pulling out in a quick stroke. Repeat all around the dot; form three or more petal layers over the first, making petals shorter with each layer.

Using a fine leaf tip (such as #352), pipe a small mound in the center of a flower nail to form the base. Holding the tip vertically against the surface, with the pointed end of the leaf tip almost touching the mound, apply gentle steady pressure as you pipe a leaf-shaped petal. Then decrease pressure as you pull away. Repeat with more leaf-shaped petals aro