How to Pipe a BIG Buttercream Rose- Cake Video
Today I'm going to share how to pipe a BIG buttercream rose on top of your cakes for a dramatic, beautiful look.
There seems to be a renewed interest in buttercream piping lately, and I love it! I wanted to share with you this very simple (really!) method of piping a buttercream rose that is so large, it covers the entire top of the cake!
While buttercream roses are very traditional in cake decorating, the exaggerated size of this rose gives the cake a fresh, trendy feel.
Materials for Big buttercream rose
*This cake is a three layer, 6 inch round cake (white almond sour cream--doctored mix) and it is frosted with our "Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream" from the recipes section. It is resting on it's own cardboard cake circle cut down to the size of the cake. I smoothed the buttercream using the "Viva Paper Towel Method".
Wilton 125- (Or your preferred very large petal piping tip). This is all that you need for the rose.
Wilton 2- for the small dots piped around the sides
Wilton 21- or your preferred star tip for the shell border
Coral Buttercream- I made using a combination of Americolor Deep Pink, Orange, and a very small amount of Red Red
Miscellaneous
Turntable-- Makes this cake so much easier to create since spinning and piping makes for a very quick rose
Small Paintbrushes--I use them all the time--in this case, I used to add create movement in the petals at the end of the tutorial. Optional.
*If you have trouble piping buttercream roses, I hope you'll try this cake anyway.
The method of piping an extra large rose over the cake is similar to piping smaller individual roses, but I think that you'll find it much more forgiving.
This design is perfect for decorators of all skill levels. Can't wait to see your beautiful cakes!
Love!
So gorgeous and impressive!
Hint: to find the center of your cake take a piece of thread & divide the cake in 1/2 laying the thread across the top of the cake (the line won't matter it's getting covered up anyway) & repeat so you have a cross mark indicating the center.
Beautiful cake! Try this on cupcakes! it looks awesome!
I saw this yesterday and loved it. In fact, I decided to make one last night for one of my coworker who's leaving us today. I will upload it in a minute. Of course, mine is not as gorgeous as yours, but I liked it. I still need more practice with my piping and covering cakes. Thanks for the tutorial and inspiration.
Thank you so much for this video! I made this cake today for my mother-in-law's 84th birthday! Can't wait to give it to her tomorrow! It turned out really cute! I'll post a picture of it! I love your tutorials!
Great video, you make it look so easy as usual :)
Love it! Do you think it would work with whipped icing (richs or pastry pride)?
Thanks!
Hi Melissa,
When piping with Buttercream how do you get your petals so smooth? My edges on my roses always come out with a tattered look on the edge of the petals and I can not figure out what is causing it. :-(
Thank you
Mallory
Melissa,
Question: How do you line up your dots on the cake so evenly on the side of the cake? Is there a trick to lining up the dots on the side of the cake? Or is it all done by eye?
Hi--I'm sorry, I missed some of your questions-- and thank you all so much for your nice comments!!!
@iljam12- I haven't worked with Rich's or Pastry Pride, but as long as it holds it shape nicely with other types of piping, it should work well with this technique also.
@Mallory-- Sometimes I have the tattered look if there is a speck of crusted icing stuck in the smallest part of the petal tip. So, I would check that first. Icing consistency can play a role--if the frosting is too stiff, the thinnest part of the petal may come out a bit broken or ragged. You can thin the frosting a bit with milk...or you can stir in a very small amount of light corn syrup.
@Seabass-- When piping dots, I imagine tringles or diamonds if that makes sense. So, I'll pipe a dot, and then two more to create the points of my imaginary triangle. You could use the same idea working 4 points at a time by imagining diamond shapes. I actually mentioned this is my video when I was piping my dots but had to edit it out because I was leaning way too far forward as I was piping & explaining and was about to flash everybody ;0) --
I've heard of people using dotted impression mats to make impressions in their fondant or buttercream which they then pipe over, but it's easier for me just to eyeball it.
Do you have to use a 125 tip, or can another be used for the rose? I don't have a 125....Also, how many cups of batter do you use for a 6 inch cake, and what is the best way to prep the cake for frosting? Freeze it first?
Hi Gracie--A 125 tip is a very large petal tip, which makes for a more dramatic cake. Our rose has much larger and taller petals than a smaller petal tip could give. If you were to use a tip 104 or smaller petal tip, it could work, and I'm sure it would be pretty...but the look wouldn't be the same. The petals would be shorter & it would take many more petals to fill things out.
For cups of batter-- Wilton's Chart has a section for this which you may like to refer to for various sizes of cake--
We vary the amounts depending on how many layers, and how tall we'd like our tiers. But a jumping off point-- 2 cups of batter per 6" pan for a two layer cake will give you a 4" tall cake.
We never frost the final coat of frosting on a cold cake because it won't crust properly. We frost the crumb coated cakes at room temp. If you go to "Decorating Basics" and watch the crumb coating video, and maybe the Viva paper towel method, we go through all of this! Hope this helps! ;0)