Dress up a Sheet Cake: Vine and Purple Flowers

A friend of mine asked if I had an idea on how to dress up a sheet cake. People often call single layer rectangular cake sheet cake. Now, I practically never make sheet cakes. Not because I hate them, but because I prefer layer cakes and I don't actually have a sheet cake pan. But this principle applies for any cake baked in a casserole pan, as well. Because I don't make them, I didn't have a ready answer for my friend. But I spent some time thinking about it. The more I thought about it, the more ideas I had. I had so many different ideas, that I decided to make it a series. Maybe once a month I'll give you another idea I have to dress up a sheet cake.

Back to the point that I don't have a sheet cake pan. So... how can I make the cake to show you? Well, I've decided to use a square cake dummy. The methods I use will translate with no problem to a rectangular cake regardless of the size.

I'm assuming that no one needs help getting to this stage. The cake is baked and cooled. Leveled, if necessary or desired, but at least frosted in the frosting of your choice. It could be on a board like mine, or frosted directly in the pan. If the cake is left in the pan, then omit any decorations done on the sides of the cake.

 I used this open star tip. I don't have a number of the tip because most of my piping tips came in a large set from China. Not exactly numbered...

I should also mention that my piping is low intermediate at best. Since I'm not the best piping expert, any buttercream design I do is fairly easy to copy.

 I decided to use a coupler today because I wasn't sure if I wanted to use a different tip at some point.

I filled this piping bag with white buttercream. By the way, since I wasn't planning on eating this cake dummy, I made vegan buttercream. This is basically my American buttercream with shortening instead of butter and water instead of milk. That way, my buttercream would have a very long shelf life. However, I can't say much about the taste. But the design should work with any kind of frosting, so long as it's pipeable.

 I piped a shell border along the bottom of the cake and a rope border along the top of the cake. A shell border is made by squeezing, lifting slightly and pulling the tail back down to the bottom. A rope border is made by piping the letter C, and then piping another overlapping it, etc.

 Now we're at this stage.

 Now, I got out a couple small piping tips. One is a five-pointed star tip, the other a medium round tip, like similar to a 10 or 12 round piping tip. I forgot to take a picture of the last tip I used. It was a small leaf tip.

 I separated some buttercream into some smaller containers.

 I colored one with a bit of pink and purple to make a lavender color. The other is green with a bit of blue.

 I put green buttercream in the piping bags with the leaf tip and the round tip and the lavender buttercream in the bag with the star tip.

 I began by piping a winding green snake around the cake with the round tip, having it meet up with itself at the end.

Then I piped star shaped flowers all around the vine with the star tip with lavender buttercream. There's no rhyme or reason on this. Just wherever I felt like placing them.

 Then I piped some small leaves along the vine and next to the flowers with the small leaf tip and green buttercream.

 This design didn't take long at all. And it's a simple way to spruce up a boring sheet cake with no decorations. Plus, with a design like this, you could also ensure that every piece of cake has at least one flower.

 This kind of design is perfect for a romantic or neutral occasion. Like a wedding anniversary or valentine's day celebration. A potluck or woman's birthday.

 And look how simple it was to make.

 It's classically beautiful and a touch romantic.

 The best part about this cake is because it wasn't a cake, I was able to save most of the buttercream I used on it and can use it again.

 I scraped off the piping from the top that was mixed with other colors and had to dispose of it. It was maybe half a cup of buttercream. The rest was all salvageable.

Unfortunately, the video of this cake was lost, so we don't have a YouTube link for you. But we hope you're able to understand how it was made by the photos.