Buttercream Flowers Cake Decorating Tutorial

Here is a buttercream flowers cake I made not too long ago.

The inspiration for this buttercream flowers cake was just coloring. I wanted to create a design with a combination of dark blue, turquoise, white, and light brown. I did not have any design in mind except to use buttercream flowers in it.

A round beige cake decorated with blue and turquoise buttercream piping and white flowers

Pretty and simple buttercream flowers cake

The cake decoration started off with just a circle of dark blue and turquoise 5 petal buttercream flowers, and then I decided some white will be a nice combo so added some simple piped flowers which in some angles looked like water lilies. And then I thought the cake was still too plain, so decided to add some swirls in dot piping in a combination of dark blue and turquoise.

For coherence, I repeated the dotted swirls at the bottom of the cake in the same dark blue and turquoise buttercream dots. And I added random white 'buttercream lilies' to end the swirls.

Buttercream Flowers Cake

How to Make Buttercream Flowers Cake

Supplies needed to decorate this cake:

Cake - I used my coffee cake recipe for this cake. The cake was baked in two 6 inch pans and filled with vanilla buttercream.
Buttercream - I used untinted vanilla buttercream for the filling and to crumb coat the cake. I also used buttercream for the final brown frosting, the flowers, and the leaves on the cake.
Wilton food color in Juniper Green
Americolor food coloring in turquoise, navy blue, royal blue, brown, black
Wilton round piping tip number 3 for dots swirls, star tip number 18 (for large lilies), and star tip number 16 (for small lilies) for the water lilies, leaf tip number 352 for the green leaves and petal tip number 101 for the 5 petal flowers.
Disposable piping bags

Steps to put the cake together:

Baking and covering the cake with buttercream

Once the cakes are baked (I baked two 6 inch round cakes) and cooled, level the tops and sandwiched them with buttercream followed by a thin layer of crumb coat.
Cover the whole cake with buttercream tinted with brown and black. I used very little brown and black to tint the buttercream. The idea is to get just a light tint of black-brown to the icing. Smooth the icing on the cake.

Horizontal lines on the sides and top of the cake

Next is the horizontal lines on the sides of the cake. You need a palette knife for this. Hold a palette knife on one hand as shown below and then used the other hand to turn the turntable continuously. As you turn the turntable, gradually move your hand holding the palette knife upwards so that the lines continue forming until the top.
In doing this, the knife should only very lightly touch the icing to avoid it from totally scraping off the icing from the cake. Once the sides are done, continue with the top of the cake, starting from the outside and slowly moving towards the center of the cake.

A round cake covered in plain smooth buttercream

The sides of a beige buttercream covered round cake

This image is to show you how I held the palette knife while rotating the turntable. Like I mentioned above, the lines should start from bottom to top. I had already done the lines before I took this shot, so the picture below is only to show how I held the palette knife.

Using a palette knife to make horizontal lines on the sides of a cake

And here was how the top of my cake looked like.

The top of a beige buttercream covered round cake

The bead border

For the cake border, using Wilton tip #3 to pipe a bead border all around.

The buttercream flowers

Next, arrange the buttercream flowers on the cake with the blue and turquoise ones alternating each other. I say 'arrange' because these flowers are to be piped in advance on parchment squares and left in the freezer to harden (see below for further details on how I made the flowers). When ready to use, peel them off the paper and place them gently on the cake with a spatula. Pipe white centers for the flowers using Wilton tip #3.

Blue buttercream flowers on parchment squares

Turquoise and blue buttercream flowers on parchment squares on a cake board

Top of a round cake decorated with blue and turquoise buttercream flowers

Next are the lilies. I randomly piped these on the cake and you can do the same. Add the leaves after the flowers.

The dot swirls

Once the flowers are all done, you can go ahead and do the swirls in dot piping. To do this, use Wilton tip #3. Start with the dark blue dots, beginning the scrolls close to the flowers and then continue to the center of the cake with turquoise icing. This was how the top of my cake looked like:

The top of my decorated buttercream flowers cake

Complete the cake by piping the same swirls and white lilies on the sides of the cake, but only halfway up:

The sides of the buttercream flowers cake in pretty blue, turquoise and white hues

And that's pretty much how to decorate this simple buttercream flowers cake.

Simple Buttercream Flowers

I had 2 types of buttercream flowers on this buttercream flowers cake , ie. 5 petal flowers in dark blue and turquoise and lilies in white. Here is how I colored all the flowers and leaves on my cake:

Dark blue - a mix of Americolor navy blue (most part), a little royal blue and a tiny bit of black.
Turquoise - Americolor turquoise
White lilies - Untinted buttercream
Leaves - Wilton juniper green

Buttercream in green, blue and turquoise in small bowls

I used Wilton petal tip #101 for the blue and turquoise flowers and tips #18 & #16 for the white 'lilies'. You can pipe the lilies directly onto the cake. To make the lilies, I piped one star on the cake, lifted the nozzle completely, and then piped another one on top of the earlier star.

I have put together a separate page on how to pipe the 5 petal buttercream flowers, step by step. You can read all about it here (or click on the image below):