Although it looks pretty intricate, this embroidery cake ended up being so much easier than I thought it would be. This is partly because the piping techniques I used were so forgiving, and partly because I had some adorable floral cookie cutters to imprint onto the cake and use as piping guides for the larger flowers. I went the extra mile on the buttercream color palette and mixed up nine different colors for this design. Since this cake will look great in any color scheme you can feel free to mix up a simpler palette if you want.

To show you the piping techniques in action, here’s a full video tutorial of this embroidery cake before I get into the written tutorial below:

If you’re into cake decorating videos like this one, be sure to check out my YouTube channel for further learning! I’m always rolling out new videos, so click the subscribe button while you’re there to ensure you never miss a new one.

You Will Need:

• A chilled, crumb coated cake (mine is three 6” layers)
• 4-5 Cups of vanilla buttercream (about 1.5 batches)
• Cake turntable
• Icing Smoother
• Angled Spatula
• Wilton Color Right Performance Food Coloring Set 
• Bowls and spoons for color mixing
• Large floral cookie cutters
• Small floral cookie cutters
• Piping Bags
• 8x Wilton Tip 2 or 3 
• Wilton Tip 12
• Small paint brush (optional)

Step 1: Frost the Cake with Smooth Buttercream

Place your chilled and crumb coated cake on the turntable and frost a smooth buttercream finish onto the cake. Start by frosting a smooth layer on the very top of the cake with your angled icing spatula.

Next, add buttercream to the sides of the cake and glide your icing smoother over them while turning the turntable to create smooth sides.

You’ll notice a crown of buttercream forming on the top edges of the cake, which is essential to getting sharp edges on the top. Use your angled icing spatula to swipe the crown inwards (toward the top center of the cake). Repeat until you’ve got nice sharp edges.

When your cake is looking ultra smooth, pop it into the refrigerator to firm up for at least 30 minutes. If you need more tips on creating a perfectly smooth cake finish, I’ve got a great tutorial for you here. 

Step 2: Mix the Color Palette

Divide the remaining buttercream amongst nine different bowls (or however many colors you plan on mixing, plus one bowl you’ll leave uncolored). Use the Wilton Color Right Performance Food Coloring Set to create your ideal color palette. This set comes with 8 bottles of ultra concentrated food color gels and a guide to help you mix the colors you’re imagining. If you want to replicate the color palette I created, here’s what I did:

• Dark Green: 1 drop blue, ½ drop yellow, ¼ drop brown 
• Light Green: Mix dark green with uncolored buttercream using a 1:1 ratio
• Light Purple: 1 drop pink, ¼ drop blue 
• Periwinkle Blue: 1 drop blue, ¼ drop pink
• Sky Blue: 1 drop blue
• Coral Red: 1 drop orange, 2 drops red, ½ drop brown 
• Peach: Mix 1 Tbsp of the coral red buttercream with uncolored buttercream
• Yellow: 1 drop yellow, ¼ drop brown

It might seem intimidating to custom mix your color palette but I promise it’s worth it! You’ll get more control over your colors (thus a more cohesive color palette), but like I said before – feel free to walk to the beat of your own drum and use whatever colors you’re imagining! 

Step 3: Prepare the Piping Bags

Fit eight piping bags with Wilton Tip 2 or 3, then fill each one with each of the colors you mixed up in the previous step. There’s not much of a size difference between Tip 2 and 3, so you could even use a mix of both or fit some of the piping bags with couplers so you can swap the tips between bags mid-decorating.

Step 4: Imprint the Cake with Floral Cookie Cutters

Once your frosted buttercream cake is chilled and firm to the touch, use the floral cookie cutters to make imprints where you want your embroidery to be piped.

Leave a little room to freehand some details in between imprints as well. 

Step 5: Pipe the Embroidery Textures

Start by outlining one of the floral imprints with one of the piping bags you prepared. Place a dot in the center of the flower. Squeeze and drag the piping bag from the outlined edge of the shape to the center dot and focus on making a straight line. Continue making straight lines of buttercream from the outlined edge to the center dot all the way around the shape.

For some of the flowers, you can pipe two colors on the inside of the imprint. Starting on the outlined edge of the flower, pipe the straight lines of buttercream only part of the way to the center of the shape with one color, then overlap with a different color to reach the center.

For some of the smaller flowers, I outlined the imprint with buttercream and filled in the shape with more of a back-and-forth piping motion. I started at the bottom of the flower outline and piped from one outlined edge to the other and continued piping parallel lines in a back-and-forth motion until I reached the top of the shape.

I freehanded the stems and leaves using the same embroidery-inspired piping techniques. Mainly just lines and dots!

Step 6: Add Some Accents 

I decided to add some super tiny flowers in random places as accents and I love them so much! Each one is just five dots in a circular formation.

I also placed dots in the center of each flower I created in the previous step. This made the embroidery design look super detailed and multi-layered.

Finally, I added a border on top of the cake. This is where the ninth color in my palette came in. I mixed the remaining uncolored buttercream with a little of the Coral Red to make a mid-toned coral color. Then I placed it in a bag fitted with Wilton Tip 12 and piped dots along the top edge of the cake.

If your dot border looks more like chocolate chips than dots, you can always wet a small paint brush with a little bit of water and gently reshape the peaked top until it looks more round. You can also do this with any of your embroidery piping to get rid of unwanted peaks. 

I piped just a few more tiny flowers on the very top of the cake and had to stop myself there because it is so easy to want to keep on piping! Definitely follow your heart when it comes to this design, but also try to leave plenty of white space to let the embroidery elements shine!

Just look at how adorable this embroidery cake turned out! I am so happy I finally tried these techniques and that my local JOANN had the perfect supplies to make it exactly how I imagined.

Be sure to check out your local JOANN to see their amazing cake decorating tool selection! Their Spring collection is so fun and inspiring, but they’re also my year-round go-to for local food crafting supplies (and so much more – if you’re anything like me you’ll probably also leave with armfuls of other crafts and home decor). And if you don’t live near a JOANN store, you can also shop their vast collection of products online. 

I hope you love making this embroidery cake as much as I did! If you do end up making one, let me know how it went in the comments below + be sure to tag @sugarandsparrowco and @joann_stores on Instagram to show us. We’d love to see what you create!   

Disclaimer: I was compensated by JOANN for my work of creating this project, styling, filming, photographing, and writing about their products. As always, all opinions are honest and my own. Thank you for supporting brands that support Sugar & Sparrow.

The post Buttercream Embroidery Cake Tutorial appeared first on Sugar & Sparrow.

I am so, so happy with how this cake turned out! The vast majority of terrazzo cakes I’ve seen before have been made with fondant (and they do look amazing!), but since I’m such a buttercream nerd I really wanted to see if I could create the look entirely with frosting. I’m glad I challenged myself, because I figured out a technique that works so well! By creating the print with buttercream on parchment paper, I was able to transfer it onto the top and sides of my cake and get a smooth terrazzo print all over. Just imagine all the amazing color palettes this design will work with!

This terrazzo technique is super easy, but I will admit that using it on both the top and sides of the cake can be a little time consuming. It essentially involves creating large buttercream transfers (one for the top and one to wrap around the sides) and ironing them onto the cake with a Wilton fondant smoother. Most of your time is spent waiting for those transfers to firm up in the refrigerator until they’re just the right consistency to work with. If you’re short on time, using this technique on only the sides will give you that same terrazzo look while saving you half the time! Either way, this terrazzo technique is going to make your cake next level.

Here’s a quick video of the decorating process for you to visualize the technique before you read all about it below:

If you’re into cake decorating videos like this one, be sure to check out my YouTube Channel! You’ll find tons of videos to inspire you there, and make sure you never miss a new one by clicking the Subscribe button.  

You Will Need: 

• 6-inch cake that’s been crumb coated and chilled
• 1.5 batches of vanilla buttercream
• Wilton Color Right Food Color System 
• Bowls and spoons for color mixing 
• Parchment paper
• Scissors
• Pencil
• A ruler and a piece of string for measuring
• 6-inch cardboard cake circle
• Wilton Tip 2 (x5) 
• Piping Bags 
• Angled Icing Spatula
• Wilton Fondant Smoother

Step 1: Create a Buttercream Color Palette

Reserve 2.5 Cups of buttercream and divide the rest evenly amongst separate bowls, one per color of your terrazzo tiles. I decided to use five different colors in my design, so I divided my buttercream into five different bowls and used the Wilton Color Right System to color each one.

The Wilton Color Right System is best for creating custom colors, and it comes with a handy chart to help you mix just the right amounts to get the color you have in mind. For example, to get the muted pink tone I mixed a little of the Pink with the tiniest bit of Brown to create more of a dusty rose color. 

Mix away until you’ve got the ideal color palette, then add each color into a separate piping bag fitted with Wilton Tip 2. 

Step 2: Measure and Cut the Parchment Paper

Before you start piping away, you’ll first need to cut out parchment paper to fit the top and sides of your cake. Measuring the top is easy if you have a cardboard cake circle that’s the same size as the diameter of your cake. Simply trace the cake circle onto a piece of parchment paper and cut it out. 

For the sides, you’ll need a ruler and a piece of string. Measure the height of your cake with the ruler, then wrap a string around your cake and mark where it comes together before measuring it with the ruler. This will give you the height and circumference of your cake’s sides. Add about ½ inch to the height measurement and 1 inch to the circumference measurement, then trace the dimensions onto wax paper and cut it out. You’ll now have a strip of parchment paper that’s sized just a tiny bit bigger than you need (trust me on this!) to create your terrazzo pattern on. 

Step 3: Pipe the Terrazzo Colors

Starting with the circular piece, use your piping bags to create random terrazzo-inspired shapes all over the parchment paper. Be sure to leave some blank spaces in between to give the shapes just the right amount of space. It helps to pull up some images of terrazzo patterns for inspiration.

Once your terrazzo tiles are piped on, place the parchment into the refrigerator to firm up for about 20 minutes. This part is important for making sure the tiles maintain their perfect shapes during the next step. 

Step 4: Frost the Parchment Paper 

When your terrazzo tiles are nice and firm, spread the reserved buttercream over top of them, creating a ¼ inch thick layer of frosting over the entire piece of parchment paper. Make sure the buttercream is as smooth as possible and don’t be afraid to apply a little pressure to help fill in all the spaces between the color tiles.

Then, place the frosted parchment pieces back into the refrigerator for another 10 minutes, but no longer. You want to make sure the buttercream is firm enough to work with, but not so firm that it doesn’t adhere to the cake easily. 

Step 5: Transfer the Terrazzo Pattern to the Top

Add a super thin layer of fresh buttercream frosting to the top of the cake to act as glue, then place the circular Terrazzo parchment on top, buttercream side down.

Use the Wilton Fondant smoother to press the parchment down so it adheres to the top of the cake perfectly, then place the cake back into the refrigerator for another 10 minutes. If you feel like the top needs to be flatter, you can put a weight (like a couple soup cans) into a cake pan that’s the same diameter as your cake and place it on top. This will keep just the right amount of pressure on it while it sets in the fridge.

After it’s firmed up, carefully peel back the parchment paper to reveal your beautiful buttercream terrazzo!

Step 6: Create the Terrazzo Pattern on the Sides

Repeat steps 3 and 4 using the strip of parchment paper you previously prepared for the sides of the cake.

After its last trip to the refrigerator, where it’s semi-set, apply a thin layer of fresh buttercream to the sides of the cake for glue.

Wrap the parchment (buttercream side down) around the circumference of the cake and be sure to pull it as tightly as you can so it makes contact with every inch of those sides. You can secure the parchment with binder clips if you need to, but mine really stayed put once I had it wrapped.

Smooth the terrazzo wrap with the Wilton Fondant smoother and place it back into the refrigerator for a final 10 minutes.

Now that the wrap is nice and set, gently peel the parchment paper off the cake to reveal those gorgeous terrazzo sides.

Finally, use a paring knife to cut away the excess buttercream around the top edge. This part is essential for making sure you’ve got perfect, sharp edges.

Just look at that pretty buttercream terrazzo transfer!

This technique works in all sorts of color palettes and cake sizes, so let your imagination run wild with this one. And if you’re in need of a few things on the list, be sure to check out the amazing selection of cake decorating supplies at your local JOANN store or shop their online collection! It’s a one stop shop for everything you need for this cake design and then some. Happy National Craft Month, everyone! 

Disclaimer: I was compensated by JOANN for my work of creating this project, styling, filming, photographing, and writing about their products. As always, all opinions are honest and my own. Thank you for supporting brands that support Sugar & Sparrow.

The post Buttercream Terrazzo Cake Tutorial appeared first on Sugar & Sparrow.