Buttercream Palette Knife Painting
Learn how to make a beautiful cake with a palette knife painting effect in this free cake decorating video tutorial!
Equipment
Ingredients
- Cake Recipe of Choice We used our Vanilla Velvet Cake Recipe to make 8 inch and 6 inch tiers.
- Buttercream Frosting: Choose your favorite! We used our Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream Recipe but our classic Vanilla Buttercream is great too!
- Silicone Pastry Brush for texturing our tiers
- Palette Knives of Choice (As we mentioned, you could also achieve a similar look from offset spatulas)
- Coloring Gels We used Americolor Deep Pink, Avocado Green, Electric Green, and Lemon Yellow
- Disposable Piping Bags
- Miscellaneous- Plastic Spoon optional we used for the tulips, turntable (helpful), bench scraper (helpful for smoothing the frosting before applying texture), small offset spatula, parchment or waxed paper, disposable piping bag
Instructions
- If adding texture to your tiers as I did, use your pastry brush immediately after frosting your tiers so that the frosting doesn't crust before you have a chance to apply texture.
- You may find it helpful to chill your tiers to firm up the buttercream before applying the flowers.
- A soft (not runny) consistency of frosting is best for painting. You can add just a bit more milk or cream to your frosting if it seems too thick.
- I kept my main colors of buttercream in small containers with plastic wrap or a dampened paper towel on top so that they wouldn't crust over while I worked.
- I find it easiest to pipe dots of buttercream first and then use the palette knife to spread it and add texture.
Notes
This palette knife painting design works on cakes of all shapes and sizes. You can recreate our design, or use the techniques to create designs of your own.
We find it easiest to do the palette knife painting design on chilled, frosted cakes so that the base coat of frosting is nice and firm.