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. Large gum paste flowers continue to gain popularity and so it’s only natural that buttercream flowers should follow suit! Have fun with this one ;0)~
Materials
*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 a 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!
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Such a pretty little cake. I love it!
Beautiful job! I will find an occasion to do this!
I love it!
Love it! Could you do it on a buttercream iced cake? or would it make the buttercream rose to soft?
Hi Cher, yes, you could pipe this rose on an all butter buttercream iced cake. On the video Melissa used the Fluffy Buttercream recipe that is mostly shortening with a small amount of butter. Either recipe would be fine.
I love it. Looks very elegant!
Sweetly and delicate, I love, congratulations!
I’ve always wanted to try this technique on a cake but always second guessed my ability to pull it off. But after seeing this video, I’m going to give it a try. It’s not as complicated as I imagined. Awesome video and beautiful cake. Love It!
Love this, Melissa! I need a simple cake for my daughter’s 30th. She will love this! I think it’s absolutely perfect!!!
Stacy
I need to go get that tip so I can make this! Love love love it!
LOVE it!!! Beautiful cake!
I enjoyed the video and the beautiful yummy results, thank you…
Absolutely beautiful.
Is this the best sized of piping bag to work with to keep things neat? Bigger bags always seem a bit hard to handle
Melissa – love, love this cake. In fact, love the last few videos you’ve created for us with the hand-painted flowers. Can’t wait to try these. Thank you so much!
This is beautiful Melissa! And I can see the videos finally on my iPad! Yay!
Radhika
LOVE this!!! So pretty. I almost did this on my cake for today – it would have worked perfect but ran out of time. Can’t wait to try this.
How many cups of batter do you put in your 6″ pans?
Thanks Melissa!
Love “My Cake School” so much!! It has been the BEST gift I have ever received! Melissa, you are an incredible teacher! Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge! <3
Thanks, Melissa for this lovely rose tutorial video which was very clear.
Another easy , spectacular cake!
♥♥♥♥ it!
Beautiful! Can’t wait to try this!
BEAUTIFUL! I love it!
This is a great idea! And is easy to do. My first two did not come out perfectly but will repeat the technique and I think it’ll be improved. My husband commented that it looked like the final products would have been very difficult to do. Thanks so much for the inspiration!
This is really beautiful! I can’t wait to try it :)
I love it! Cant wait to try it out!
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–
http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/baking-party-cake-2-inch-pans.cfm
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)
Thanks so much! I’ll let you know how it goes as I am going to try to make this cake for mother’s day….
I hope you have a happy one!!!
Good luck! I think you will love making it – Happy Mother’s Day to you too ;0)!
This is so beautiful and I can’t wait to try it!
Whoo hoo!!! So I did make this large buttercream rose on, also a 6″ round three layer cake, about 5″ tall. I am not very savvy at making roses, so after about 2/3 of the way, I scraped it all off and started over. No biggie..remembering to make each petal longer, and keeping the tip upright in the beginning, made my rose look more like Melissa’s. The heat and humidity in my area made it difficult to maintain the proper consistency for my rose, so I had to chill the cake and the piping bag a few times. After I was satisfied with the rose, I let it chill for about 15 minutes. I would highly recommend Melissa’s last idea about using the paintbrush. As some of my petals were a little too close together, and a little too straight up, I used the brush to gently bend petals backwards for a more natural look or to separate them. I would definately make this rose again..the sky is the limit with colors. I also used a little Wilton pearl spray on the rose. Not sure if I would do again, but maybe some shimmery dust for a “damp” look…:-)
I so love this cake! I am gonna practice this cake this weekend and do it for my mother in laws birthday. Thank you for the awesome video!!
Wonderful!! Thank you for your nice post, Maureen.
HI Melissa! I am going to make this flower on top of a cake frosting in mocha buttercream ( with vanilla buttercream flower). Can you tell me how much buttercream I might need for this flower for the 6″ round cake? I am pulling frosting out of my freezer :)!
Thanks.
Hi paintmycake~ I would say about 1.5-2 cups. I just piped one on a 6″ dummy ;0)
I am having trouble getting smooth edges on my flowers. I used to do this all the time, but have just recently started back up again since my granddaughter wanted me to do her wedding g cake. Would appreciate some advice.
Hi Olivia, Here is a link to a discussion from the Forum message board on the problem of ragged edges, I think you will find it helpful. https://www.mycakeschool.com/message-boards/search/ragged+edges/ Let me know if this helps.
Hi Melissa. Love this tutorial. I tried but not as nice as yours?
Hi Nelka! Your cake is beautiful!! Thanks for sharing your photo, love the red! xo