Piped Cake Tutorial by Carey Madden

This week we have a beautiful, and surprisingly easy, piped cake tutorial by Carey Madden from her book, Sensational Buttercream Decorating.

If you haven’t yet caught the buttercream bug, then you definitely will with this book.

Covering basic buttercream decorating techniques from scratch, Carey takes the reader on a journey from the absolute basics to becoming accomplished in the art of beautifully decorated buttercream cakes. Sensational Buttercream Decorating encompasses a range of styles including floral, classical, fabric, graphic art, vintage and international-inspired designs with 50 projects in total to inspire you.

To follow this piped cake tutorial you will need:

Six inch layer cake, sliced, filled, crumb-coated, iced with with pale peach smooth buttercream and chilled.
Tinted buttercream (175mls) in the following colours: light brown, dark pink, light blue, dark peach, dark green, light green, pale peach (for the scallop border top and bottom).
Seven piping bags and couplers
Piping tips/tubes: No. 6 round, No. 3 round, No. 2 round, No. 80 U tip, No. 14 open star tip, No. 352 leaf tip (2 of them – one for the dark green, one for the light green).
Cocktail stick, tweezers and sugar pearls.

Instructions:

Use a cocktail stick to dot small arcs on the side of the cake for the stems, alternating between placing them near the top and near the bottom to create two rings of staggered arcs around the cake as per the design above. To add interest, mark some of the arcs curving upwards, some curving downwards, some curving left and some curing right.
Using the brown icing and the No. 2 round tip, pipe over all the arcs/stems.
Using the dark pink icing and the No. 80 U tip , pipe two rings of petals to form the cupped flower at the middle of each arc.
Using the blue icing and the No. 3 tip, pipe one or two “five-dot daisies” on each arc, placing them randomly.
Using the dark peach icing and the No. 14 open star tip, pipe or two small rosettes on each arc, placing them randomly.
Using dark green icing and one of the No. 352 leaf tips, pipe one or two leaves on each stem, placing them randomly.
Using the light green icing and the second No. 352 leaf tip, pipe another one or two leaves on each stem, again placed randomly.
Use the tweezers to place three or four sugar pearls around each stem, randomly.
Using pale peach icing and the No. 6 round tip, pipe a smooth scallop border around the bottom of the cake.
To finish, pipe a smooth scallop border along the top edge of the cake also.