Blooming Spring Flower Cake

Instructions

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1. - Step 1: Bake the Cake
2. - Prepare the cake batter following recipe instructions. Bake and cool 2 cake layers. Trim each layer to 2 ½ in. high. Fill and stack your cake layers using white buttercream frosting. Your cake should be about 5 in. tall.
3. - Step 2: Tint the Frosting
4. - Using Rose, Violet and Christmas Red icing colors, tint buttercream as follows: For icing the cake: · Tint 2 cups buttercream magenta (combine Rose and Violet icing colors). For making the flowers: · Tint ¾ cup buttercream light pink (combine Christmas Red and Rose icing colors) · Tint ¾ cup buttercream dark pink (combine Rose and a small amount of Violet icing colors) · Tint ¾ cup buttercream pink-purple (combine Rose and a small amount of Violet icing colors) · Tint ¾ cup buttercream light purple (combine Rose and Violet icing colors) · Tint ¾ cup buttercream medium violet (use Violet icing color) · Tint ¾ cup buttercream dark violet (use Violet icing color).
5. - Reserve the remaining buttercream white.
6. - Step 3: Ice the Cake
7. - Using the magenta buttercream and an icing smoother, ice your cake smooth
8. - Step 4: Prepare the Decorating Bags
9. - The colorful details on these buttercream flowers is done by combining more than one buttercream in each decorating bag. The frosting colors mix together as you pipe, creating a lovely, decorative effect.Prepare six decorating bags with couplers. Fill each bag with random amounts of light pink, dark pink, pink-purple, light purple, medium violet, dark violet and white buttercream.You can layer colors (start with white, then layer one or two colors on top of that), or stripe your bag with different colors. If you want solid flowers, just fill your bags within individual colors. The best thing is that there's no wrong way to fill them!
10. - Step 5: Pipe your flowers
11. - Attach tip 225 to each prepared decorating bag. Cover a large cake board with wax paper. Using all the decorating bags, pipe about 12 rows of 10 to 12 drop flowers. You won't need all of them, but this will give you plenty of flowers to choose from! Switch all the bags to tip 2. Pipe centers in all the flowers. Once all your drop flowers are done, place them in the freezer to set, about 30 minutes to an hour. For this next batch of flowers, you'll need a flower nail. If you've never used one before, check out our tutorial on How to Use a Flower Nail for easy beginner tips! Switch all the bags to tip 101. Using the Apple Blossom technique, pipe 70 to 80 blossoms using the flower nail and the wax paper squares. Switch all the bags back to tip 2. Pipe centers in all the flowers. Transfer the flowers on their paper squares to another cake board (or you can use the one in the freezer already if there's room) and freeze until set, about 30 minutes to an hour.
12. - Step 6: Decorate the Cake
13. - Leave tip 2 on all your decorating bags. Using the remaining frosting in the bags, pipe a column of 5 dots down the side of the cake and attach a blossom to each dot. Repeat around the cake until it's covered. Prepare a decorating bag with tip 1M and the remaining white buttercream. Pipe tall swirls around the top edge of the cake. Place the drop flowers around the buttercream swirls. Helpful Hint: Both the blossoms and the drop flowers thaw quickly, so only take a few out of the freezer at a time to prevent the flowers from softening too much.

Notes