Dress up a Sheet Cake: Basket of Spring Flowers

This time in dressing up a sheet cake, I'm going to attempt some buttercream flowers. This is not my greatest strength, so if I can do this, anyone can.

As always, we start with a frosted square or rectangular cake.

 I colored my buttercream beforehand. Today I'm using pink (colored with pink food coloring), green (colored with green and blue food coloring), purple (colored with purple and pink food coloring), yellow (colored with yellow food coloring) and brown (colored with baker's cocoa).

 I'm using several different tips today. And I'm not sure how to describe each of them, but I'll do my best. The first one on the left is a medium sized petal tip. The one to the right of it is curved on one side and has teeth on the opposite side. The one to the right of it is a small leaf tip. The one the furtherst to the right is a five-pointed closed star tip. The one at the top of the frame in a piping bag is a small basketweave tip. And the one at the front of the frame is a grass tip. I also used a small round tip on the piping bag with the coupler on it.

 I put purple buttercream in the bag with the petal tip.

 I put green buttercream in the bag with the small leaf tip.

 I put brown buttercream in the bag with the basketweave tip.

 I put green buttercream in the bag with the grass tip.

 I put pink buttercream in the bag with the coupler fitted first with the five-pointed star tip and later with the small round tip.

 And finally, I put yellow buttercream in the bag with the curved tip.

First, I cover the sides of the cake with brown basketweave. If you've never made basketweave, it's not that hard, it's just time consuming. First, you pipe a vertical line with your buttercream, and then cover that line with horizontal lines, leaving enough space between the lines for another line.

 Then, pipe another vertical line next to the first one, leaving a bit of space, but covering up the messy ends of the horizontal lines.

 Then, pipe horizontal lines over the second vertical line alternating the placement.

 Continue this pattern all the way around the sides of the cake. Here you can also see one way to handle the corners. I piped a vertical line right on the corner, and wrapped the horizontal lines around the corner.

 Keep going until all sides are completely covered. I had to refill my piping bag at one point. It took a long time and I got a cramp in my hand by the end, but I just love the effect that it gives.

 I was a bit nervous about piping the flowers, so I decided to practice a bit on a plate before I piped anything on the cake. For this cake, I chose to pipe them directly onto the cake, although most people pipe them onto a flower nail. I don't actually have a flower nail. Definitely need to get one of those. But in this case, I actually piped the flowers directly onto the top of the cake.

 I piped the yellow flowers with the curved piping tip to give it a bit of a daisy look. The purple flowers were piped with the petal tip curving around to make the petals. I clearly need more practice with a petal tip. I have trouble with that one. The small pink flowers are piped with the five-pointed star tip. Those are super easy. It's just a squeeze and release and I love using it to fill in any gaps in a group of flowers. Then, I piped some leaves with the leaf tip. Used the small round tip to add pink centers to the yellow flowers. Then, to fill in gaps and give it a bit of an Easter basket feel, I added some green grass wherever I felt there was too much white showing.

 I feel like this design would be perfect with a strong cake topper since there's a good amount of unpiped cake in the center.

 This design is very appropriate for Spring. It could also be an Easter basket theme. All you need are a few Easter eggs or an Easter bunny for the center.

 However, it would totally work for just about any Spring occasion including birthdays, dinners, anniversaries or other celebrations.

 Who doesn't love Spring flowers when the sun is shining?

Watch the whole process on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/uBwblRBxFDQ
Schaut das ganze Prozess auf unserem YouTube Kanal hier an: https://youtu.be/XVG-jsdkgkA