If you need some inspiration for how to decorate a cake for a special celebration, or you're looking for a simple DIY wedding cake decorating idea, this article is for you.
Do it yourself baking and cake decorating for big occasions can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. One of our most popular blog articles explores the question ‘Should I make my own wedding cake?' , so clearly lots of you love the challenge of elegant homemade celebration cakes!
Making a cake with sprinkles might not be the first thing you think of for elegance and sophistication, but Creative Cakes & Bakes demonstrate here that you can achieve incredibly beautiful results using carefully selected and positioned cake sprinkles combined with buttercream cake decorating for your special occasion. We're not talking ice-cream van hundreds and thousands here!
The magic here lies in the contrast of textures: soft, swirling buttercream blooms paired with glossy, edible pearl-like sprinkles (also known as dragees). The effect is luxurious and romantic, with minimal tools and no need for expert piping skills.
What You’ll Need
A cake covered with ivory sugarpaste fondant for a smooth and silky canvas, or a cake covered in smooth layer of chilled buttercream. Ours is a double layer 10” tall celebration cake, but you can scale it to whatever suits your occasion.
Buttercream icing. We used this on trend
coral colour and recommended oil or gel based food colouring for
buttercream.
Piping bags fitted with assorted open and closed star tips (for example,
open star 1m,
open star 8b, and
drop flower 2d.)
Culpitt Select pearl sprinkles in various sizes and shades. For this cake we used:
Small bowls for easy access to sprinkles
Optional: tweezers for precise sprinkle placement
Step 1 - Choose piping tips and colour buttercream
Select a few different piping tips to create variety in your buttercream blooms. Prepare different shades of buttercream by adding a little colour at a time for the palest shade first. Put some of this into a piping bag and set aside. Add a little more colour to the remaining buttercream and put this into another piping bag. Follow this process until you have coloured buttercream to your taste and occasion, making a selection of contrasting and complimentary shades.
Step 2 - Pipe a floral buttercream garland band
Using the different tips, pipe swirls, rosettes, and short bursts in alternating colours.
You can watch a demonstration of the piping techniques in our video post here (you can skip to 4.03mins in the video if you're short on time!) There’s no need to be too precise to keep the flow around the cake look organic in design. The overlapping and asymmetry adds charm!
Pro tip: Practice your piping on parchment first to get the feel for the tips and pressure.
Step 3 - Add the edible pearl sprinkles
Now add the sprinkles embellishments to add contrasting shiny texture to the soft buttercream. Using your fingers or tweezers, press different sizes of pearl sprinkles into the buttercream flowers and around the band. Cluster a few together for a beaded effect, and scatter some more lightly across the rest of the cake for a whimsical approach.
There you have it. The perfect special celebration cake, wedding cake, milestone birthday cake and more!
This decorating technique brings timeless elegance without too much stress. The same approach can be taken for all sorts of special celebrations. Consider a milestone birthday for example, switch up the buttercream colours to be bold and punchy and use bright pearls, or perhaps softer pastel pearls for a baby shower. It’s a very adaptable cake decorating technique!
This buttercream and sprinkle combo is a sophisticated design that looks like it comes from a boutique bakery, but is surprisingly simple to achieve at home. Give it a try!
elegant celebration cake decorating: easy buttercream & pearl sprinkles design
Comments
There are currently no comments, be the first to comment.