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buttercream flower cake with flowers around it on marble

Easy Buttercream Flower Cake (How to make buttercream flowers!)

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  • Author: Britt Berlin
  • Prep Time: 120
  • Time to bake cake flavor of choice: 45
  • Total Time: 2 hours 45 minutes
  • Yield: 16 1x
  • Category: Dessert
  • Method: Piping
  • Cuisine: American
  • Diet: Vegan

Description

This elegant yet surprisingly easy buttercream flower cake is perfect for all celebrations ! Use your favorite cake recipe and pipe buttercream roses and more in this easy tutorial with video!


Ingredients

Scale
  • Your favorite cake recipe (I used my favorite vegan vanilla cake recipe)
  • 2 1/2 batches of vegan buttercream frosting (or your favorite American buttercream frosting)
  • Vegan/plant based/all natural food coloring*

Instructions

  1. Bake: Bake your selected cake according to the instructions.
  2. Cool the cake:  Make sure that the cake is FULLY COOLED before assembling. This will take at least an hour.
  3. Make one batch of buttercream frosting: Prepare one batch of buttercream frosting. This will be used to make the crumb coat and outer coat of frosting.
  4. Assemble the layer cake: Assemble the layer cake by first applying a crumb coat. Then you may tint the final coat of buttercream however you’d like and apply that. You can make an additional 1/2 batch of buttercream here if you want a thick outer coating.
  5. Chill the cake: Place the cake into the fridge to chill while you make the buttercream flowers.
  6. Make the buttercream flowers: Make the additional batch of buttercream and section off the buttercream into your various colors. I use about 1/2 cup- 3/4 cup per flower color. If you’re making rose flowers, use the Petal Cake Decorating Tip 104 or 127. Place a pat of buttercream onto the top of your flower nail, along with a square of parchment paper. With the thicker side of the tip facing down and holding the tip almost 90 degrees (closer to 80), pipe a small circle of the inside of the rose tip. Then tilting the tip more at an angle (60 to 45 degrees), pipe petals around the initial inside of the rose tip. See video for visual. Continue until you’ve piped your entire rose. Take the piece of parchment paper, and place it onto a baking sheet and into the freezer to chill as you pipe the remaining flowers. Repeat the freezing process. Reserve some frosting for the dots of frosting and the leaves.
  7. Assemble the flower buttercream cake: Remove the cake from the fridge. With your selected cake design, place a dot of frosting onto the back of the frozen buttercream flower, and gently press the flower onto the cake where you’d like it to go. Repeat with the remaining flowers. Finally, pipe leaves using the leaf piping tip listed in the post to finish the cake.
  8. Store and enjoy!

Notes

For vegan food coloring: I recommend Nomeca vegan liquid food colors or Suncore foods. Whole Foods 365 also works, but you’ll need to mix the colors together to achieve your desired color.