Cascade of Buttercream Flowers~Video Tutorial

I love the look of flowers cascading down the front of the cake. One popular way to achieve this look with either real or gum paste flowers. Today I'm excited to show you how to create the same elegant look with buttercream!

The majority of this video is devoted to piping several different styles of buttercream flowers. The actual attaching of the flowers is quite easy. You simply need to allow time for the flowers to dry on squares of parchment (or waxed paper).

In the video, I also explain that I like to pipe a circle of frosting before piping the petals on top of it. This gives us a nice, flat base which will make the attaching process simpler. It also ensures that the petals are well secured, which is especially nice when you'd like to space out your petals (as we do with our buttercream ribbon roses).

Don't forget to check beneath the video for a few notes and materials used. Enjoy the video!

Materials

My cake tiers are 8"/6". (The 6" is a double barrel cake and is 7 inches tall).

A Crusting Buttercream/Frosting- I used our High Ratio frosting as found in the recipes section.

Piping Tips- Wilton 102, 104 (petal tips), Wilton 81 (for "mums"), Wilton 10 or 12 for piping the base circle of frosting.

Dragees or Sugar Pearls- Any variety you'd like. I have an assortment of mostly India Tree brand dragees, and my sugar pearls are by Wilton.

Rose/Flower Nail

Parchment Paper/Waxed Paper (Parchment is a little more porous which speeds along the drying.)

styrofoam/cardstock circle- This is optional. I used this to extend the surface of my rose nail for the larger flowers.

Gold Airbrush Color or Luster "paint"- I used Duff's brand gold airbrush color to add the gold accents to my dried flowers

A Few Notes~

In the video I use our high ratio shortening recipe, but any crusting frosting/buttercream recipe will do. The flowers were dry enough to carefully handle after 24 hours. Most of the flowers used in my video had been drying for 1 ½ days. Dry times can vary, as we say so often. So, until you really have time to experiment, I would make them 1 ½ to 2 days before you plan to apply them to the cake.

While the buttercream flowers are firm enough to hold, they are not hard, and still have a bit of softness on the inside. As we mentioned in the video, if you like the piped look of the flowers but would like to have a stockpile for later use, royal icing is a great option!

I liked using dragees in our cake to add to the vintage feel, but dragees are expensive (often at least $10 for a bottle).

I use them so sparingly that one bottle lasts me well over a year.
Dragees are very hard, and are not considered to be edible, although I think many of us have eaten our share of silver dragees on Christmas cookies as kids ;0) -- There is nothing like dragees to add that metallic pop of bling. You could easily substitute sugar pearls or even balls of fondant or piped buttercream!

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