Today, we are going to make a beautiful buttercream cake with piped roses, rose buds, and ruffles! I love working with buttercream, and my favorite cakes often feature delicate piping.
If you don’t have much experience with piping, don’t worry. The techniques that I will demonstrate in this tutorial are not difficult to master with a little practice! It’s amazing what you can do with a simple petal tip.
With all of the roses and ruffles, this cake has a romantic, shabby chic feel to it which continues to be a popular for weddings and other special occasions. I hope that you enjoy the tutorial!
We have divided into two parts:
Part One: We demonstrate how to pipe buttercream roses (classic as well as a cabbage rose), and rose buds
Part Two: In Part 2, we demonstrate how to pipe the petal-like ruffles around the sides of our tier and also apply our dried buttercream flowers to complete the cake.
Materials:
Our stacked tiers are 8″ and 6″. We frosted the cakes and piped our roses with our Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream Recipe but any crusting recipe will do (if you plan to dry your flowers in advance). Each tier was on it’s own cardboard cake circle, and the top tier was supported from below by 4 bubble tea straws.
Colors: We used Americolor Deep Pink (just a touch)
Piping Tips: Wilton 104 (petal tip), Wilton 12 (med. round tip), Wilton 4 (bead border and dots), Wilton 101 (small petal tip for tiny roses)
Rose Nail
Waxed Paper Squares
Optional: Pearl Dust, White Petal Dust (I used to lighten up our pink roses and also add a little shimmer.)
Misc: Small soft paint brush for applying the pearl dust
Melissa, this is such a lovely dainty looking cake. Thankyou for this tutorial. Big thankyou for showing how to do those rosebuds! I haven’t had any luck with those darn things! But you have really explained it well. I feel a little more confident again! Here I go!!
The video is not playing for me:(
The video is not playing
Hi Sadia and Cynthia, are you able to see the other videos? It is playing on our end so I’m wondering if you need to update your Adobe Flash. Here is a link http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html, and it is free.
Hi Sadia and Cynthia, Melissa has re-embedded the video just in case that would help you, if not, I would try the Adobe Flash Player update ….in the above post. Let us know if you are still having a problem
Not playing for me either :(
I so Love this cake!! It is so beautiful!! Thank you so much for sharing!! I am just starting to look at the video now.
I love your instructions!! You make, making the rose so easy!! Thank You!
Hi Melissa, what kind of buttercream are you using for these roses. Do you have the recipe here? I have not been very lucky with this kind of roses and I think is because I have not found a good recipe for this technique-
Thank you in advance for your response
Sorry I just read that they were made with the Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream Recipe, I will try this one.
Thank you
Hey I was woundering about watching your videos over cell phones? I get like first few minutes then it won’t play. I just got a new phone HTC one and it’s not playing at all the link to the flash drive is not compatible with it or my old phone. So what can those of us watching over mobile devices do to watch them? I know I would love to learn this from you.
Hi Candace, I have been told that some phones do not have the power to load and play long videos. Since you are able to watch a few minutes before it stops that could be the problem. This might be a good question to put on the Forum to see if any other members who have HTC phones have a solution.
It worked!! Great job!!
Hi, I couldn’t find which cake recipe you use for the cake layer for stacked cakes..I have a couple baby showers and wedding and my recipe seems very dense…looking for a good tasting and one that will hold up for fondant or buttercream and also if I fill with a flavor do I need a stiff buttercream dam? I want to use a cherry pie filling mixed with some buttercream..And finally would I weight the cake after filling before I dirty ice the cake?
Thank you for making this video. The cake looks so pretty and sweet. Is that a pink ribbon wrapped round the bottom of the top tier? How did you do this without damaging the bottom row of ruffle?
Hi Juliana, The ribbon was an afterthought and it was difficult to make it work after the buttercream ruffles were in place. The ribbon should have been in place before the first row of ruffles were piped. Thank you for your nice comments on this cake.
Hi love the cake and all the butter cream items you do. this is not about that but do you ever consider closed book cakes stacked? very hard to find a good tutorial. thanks pat
I loved this video. I was avoiding making these petal/ruffles because I thought they were more difficult to do. I have been asked if I can make something similar for a small wedding…yikes…my first request!! Question: (and I think I already know the answer from messing up in the past)..when you placed your top tier on the bottom, you added a touch of buttercream to help the top tier (on it’s own cakeboard) attach to the bottom tier. The bottom tier was crusted at the time; that is my question. And, after a few hours of being stacked like this, when the top tier is removed from the bottom, it will come off cleanly and won’t stick at all? I definitely need to keep practicing stacking tiers and now this new technique. Thank you for a wonderful video…oh yes..one more question: for the tiny pre-piped roses on your sheet, did you use a flower nail or just pipe directly onto the wax paper? Thank you so much!!!
Guess what? I need to watch part 1 of the video and I bet my rose piping questions will be answered. Sorry! I need to pay better attention….but I do have a question on the petals. Would you keep the same size piping tip for the petals regardless of the sizes of the tiers? Probably right? Whether 6, 8, or 10, etc..the tip size is the same. Is that correct? Thank you again. :-)
Hi Paula–Thanks for your kind words about the tutorial, I’m glad that you will be experimenting with this design!
Whenever stacking buttercream-frosted tiers, I always let them crust, and then chill them in the freezer for maybe 5 minutes or so…until the frosting is firm. (Leaving in the freezer for a long time will lead to condensation issues.). Have the frosting nice and firm makes the stacking process much less stressful as you are less likely to have nicks in the icing, etc. –
I apply frosting as my “glue” before stacking so that the tiers won’t slide around on me as I move the cake to it’s final place. Assuming the buttercream on the cake has crusted (or even been chilled), the surface is not going to grab onto the upper tier..which is why a little fresh frosting is needed.
When it is time to separate tiers, I like to slide a thin spatula or long thin knife around the base of the tier to break the seal that was created when the tiers were stacked against that icing “glue”. You shouldn’t have issues with the frosting being pulled away. —
As for your question about using different petal tips according to the size of your tier…it’s entirely up to you. I would probably keep everything uniform if doing this petal/ruffle technique on more than one tier, but if you like the look of many rows of petals on your small tiers, you’ll want to go smaller.
Let us know if you have any more questions!
Thank you Melissa for your time and for such a detailed and easy to follow reply. I guess I am “gun shy” about trying stacking again as it was such a disaster the first time. But….I will try again and I will follow your instructions carefully. Thank you so much for your encouragement and accessibility. :-)
OK..so I did try this and I posted a picture in the gallery. It looks to me like my ruffles are “droopy”. Maybe because it is 200 degrees outside where I live and it was 1/2 that inside my house..I did add extra powdered sugar to try to make the frosting a bit stiffer. As I was piping I realized that in order to get a smooth ruffle, as opposed to a ruffled ruffle, do you kind of pipe and swoop to keep it smooth. I am curious as to what you think and how I could improve next time. :-)
Maybe my “petals” are too big-wide? Someone wants me to make a wedding cake next year (thank heavens…I have months to practice), and they like your petals…mine are too ruffley. :-)
Really enjoying watching your videos. Can I pls ask for all your buttercream cakes are you using swiss meringue buttercream. Thanks
@pk- Thanks, most of the time we are using our “Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream” which is in our Recipes section–this would be considered an American buttercream recipe. Swiss meringue buttercream would work for this, as would any frosting that holds it’s shape nicely to piping.
I made this cake this weekend and was pretty pleased with it. I used your new white cake from scratch recipe and it was delicious!
Is the frosting a stiff or medium consistency?
@kdawn22- I missed your message before-your cake is gorgeous!
@Syliva– Medium consistency for the ruffles. You may find that you need to stiffen it a bit more for the roses.
Love all these videos! Could you tell me a good turntable to purchase? Thank you!