There are drip cakes, and then there are sprinkle drip cakes. And let me tell you, while both are pretty to look at, the sprinkle version is so much more fun! The sprinkle drip cake trend was popularized by one of my favorite cakers to follow on Instagram, @brittanymaycakes. To my knowledge, she’s the little genius behind putting sprinkles on top of a ganache drip, and I just had to give it a go because it looks so stunning – especially with this Bewitched sprinkle mix by SprinklePop.

While any sprinkle mix will do for creating a sprinkle drip cake, I was really drawn to the vibrant color scheme of Bewitched. It’s a magical blend of pink, purple, teal, and yellow jimmies and spheres, plus gold and silver dragees to give it some extra bling. I decided to color the buttercream backdrop a deep fuschia (with Americolor soft gel past in Fuschia) to really compliment all of the sprinkle colors, but they’d look pretty on all sorts of buttercream hues. Just look at how pretty they are:

The essentials you’ll need for this look are a good pair of tweezers, the perfect sprinkle mix, and a great chocolate ganache recipe. I’ve got the perfect chocolate ganache recipe and white chocolate ganache recipe at the links below, with all the tips you need for successful drips. The tweezers make it easier to perfectly place the sprinkles (as opposed to using your fingers). And it’ll look incredible with any of SprinklePop’s gorgeous sprinkle mixes! Just pick your favorite and follow along the tutorial below:

You Will Need:

• A chilled buttercream cake
• 1 batch of chocolate ganache or white chocolate ganache
• 8 oz bottle of Bewitched sprinkles (or other favorite sprinkle mix)
• Tweezers

Step 1: Do A Test Drip

Before you get too crazy dripping your ganache, I always think it’s a great idea to do a test drip on your chilled buttercream cake. Make sure your ganache is room temperature and good drip consistency first, create one drip on the side of your cake, and wait until it stops traveling.

If your ganache is too runny or warm, it will travel all the way to the bottom of the cake quickly. If it’s too cold and thick, it won’t travel much at all. Adjust the consistency and temperature of your ganache if need be, and only continue the process of dripping your cake once you’re satisfied with the look of the drips.

Step 2: Drip The Sides Of The Cake

Once your ganache has passed the first drip test, continue dripping your ganache down the sides using either a squeeze bottle or the spoon method.

It’s best to start by dripping every side before moving on to the top of the cake. This way you can better control the look of the drips from the side view and only fill what’s necessary on the top.

Step 3: Fill In The Top Of The Cake

When all the sides have been dripped, pour a small amount of ganache on the top of the cake and smooth it with an icing spatula or the back of your spoon.

Be sure to only fill in the space that’s not yet covered with ganache, because adding too much might make your drips travel farther than you’d like. I always spread the ganache on top until it just reaches where the drips have started to cover on the top of the cake.

Step 4: Place The Sprinkles

Let the ganache rest in the refrigerator for about five minutes while you pour the sprinkles into a small bowl. After refrigerating for just those few minutes, the ganache drips should be sticky, but set enough to ensure that adding sprinkles won’t drag them down.

Using your tweezers, place the sprinkles onto the ganache one by one until you achieve the look you’re going for. This could take anywhere from 20-30 minutes, depending on how precise you want to be, but trust me. It’s so worth it!

Step 5: Keep On Decorating

While you can stop after you’ve created your sprinkle drip, I believe that when it comes to SprinklePop sprinkles, more is more!

Before I dripped the cake, I added a border of Bewitched sprinkles to the bottom edge, and after creating the sprinkle drip I added a buttercream border to the top of this cake using Wilton Tip 6B, then filled in the entire top of the cake with even more sprinkles. So fun!

Ready to create your very own sprinkle drip cake? Just grab a bottle of your favorite sprinkles and let the fun begin!  

The post Sprinkle Drip Cake Tutorial appeared first on Sugar & Sparrow.

This Sea Life mold made it so easy to turn gumpaste into brilliant sea shells, coral, and starfish. It will work with fondant too, but I chose gumpaste just because I wanted the sea life pieces to dry more quickly. If you make them a week ahead, fondant is a great option. But if you’re like me and wait until the last minute, gumpaste will dry much quicker (in about 24 hours!) and is still as easy to color and work with as fondant.

To supplement my pretty gumpaste sea life accents, I used some of my favorite Wilton piping tips and pearl sprinkles (also available at JOANN) to create some additional under the sea textures. And to make things even more sea-themed, I crushed up some graham crackers to create edible sand for decorating.

Before I detail exactly how to get this under the sea look, here’s a quick video to show you the techniques in action:

Gumpaste Sea Life Materials:

• Wilton Ready-To-Use Gumpaste or fondant 
• Sea Life Gumpaste & Fondant Mold
• Wilton Color Right Food Coloring System 
• Shortening 
• Small rolling pin
• Exacto knife

Under The Sea Cake Materials: 

• A 6-inch cake that’s been crumb coated and chilled
• 2 batches of vanilla buttercream
• Icing smoother
• Angled Icing Spatula 
• 8 inch cake circle 
• Crushed graham crackers
• Sea Life Pieces 
• Wilton Tips 104, 4B, 2A, and 225
• Piping bags
• Wilton Pearl Sprinkles

Step 1: Make The Gumpaste Sea Life

Separate the Ready-To-Use Gumpaste (or fondant!) into 1 inch pieces and knead each one with a little shortening until it feels uniform in consistency, like play-doh. Use the Wilton Color Right System or food color gels of your choice to color each piece. Here’s how I colored my gumpaste:

Color by color, press the gumpaste into portions of the Sea Life Mold and use a small rolling pin to flatten it out. This mold is pretty flexible, so it should be easy to release each piece by gently pulling it away from the mold. 

Cut away the excess gumpaste with an exacto knife and place each sea life piece onto a sheet of wax or parchment paper to begin the drying process.

Allow the gumpaste to dry for at least 24 hours, flipping it over once in between to let both sides dry evenly. If you’re using fondant, allow it to dry for at least 72 hours, flipping the pieces over once in between.

Once all of your sea life pieces are dry and firm, you can move on to decorating the cake. 

Step 2: Color The Buttercream

Divide the buttercream into separate bowls: divide 4.5 cups between three separate bowls for the base frosting. Since I went for a blue ombre effect on my buttercream finish, I colored one bowl a dark blue, one bowl a medium blue, and one bowl a light blue. 

Divide the remaining buttercream into a four or five separate bowls for the colors you’ll be piping. These colors will end up being your additional buttercream textures like coral and sea grass, so feel free to copy the above color palette or follow your heart on these colors. 

Step 3: Frost The Cake

With your crumb coated cake on a turntable, frost and smooth the top of the cake with the lightest blue buttercream. Then, working from the bottom of the cake up, frost the bottom third of the cake with the deepest blue buttercream, the middle third with medium blue, and the top third with the lightest blue. 

Use your icing scraper to smooth the sides of the cake, keeping the top edge uneven. I think leaving the top edge like this gives the illusion of tiny waves around the top of the cake.

At this point in the decorating process I like to chill the cake for at least 30 minutes to let the buttercream firm up.

Step 4: Add the Crushed Graham Cracker Sand 

Transfer the chilled cake to an 8 inch cake circle and place the whole thing back on your clean turntable. Fill in the top of the cake with crushed graham cracker sand, then add some more sand to the bottom edges. 

Step 5: Add The Gumpaste Sea Life

Press your gumpaste sea life pieces into the sides of the cake wherever you feel like. For the smaller pieces (like shells) you can reserve them until you pipe the additional textures in the next step. You do you!

Step 6: Pipe Additional Textures 

Prepare separate piping bags by fitting them with piping tips and filling them with the additional buttercream colors you mixed up in step 2. I used Wilton Tip 104 for the green sea grass, Wilton Tip 4B for the open stars, Tip 2A for the coral textures, and Tip 225 for some small drop flowers.

You can pipe these textures in any order, but here’s what I did: first, I piped some coral dots with Wilton Tip 2A, then piped squiggles with the green buttercream using Wilton Tip 104:

Next, I added vibrant purple and yellow open stars using Wilton Tip 4B:

Finally, I added some little pink drop flowers with Wilton Tip 225:

You’ll find that it’s super easy to pipe these under the sea textures, and the buttercream really makes everything come together. Once your piping is finished, you can add in some of the smaller gumpaste pieces like seashells, and press some sprinkle pearls into the sides of the cake to create the illusion of bubbles. So fun! 

Step 7: Decorate The Top Of The Cake 

You can choose to leave the top of the cake sand-only, but I used some of the gumpaste coral as a cake topper, piped some open stars, and added some gumpaste shells to make an ocean floor scene.

So pretty, right? This Under The Sea Cake is so much more detailed with the gumpaste sea life pieces, and I am so happy that JOANN had the perfect mold to make my oceanic cake dreams come true! Whether you live near a JOANN store or shop their website, you’ll find all the materials to get the perfect Under The Sea look with your cake decorating. Best of all, if you download the JOANN app, you’ll always have a coupon to get these cake decorating supplies at a discount. It’s just one more reason I love this store.

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 Under The Sea Cake Tutorial appeared first on Sugar & Sparrow.

I’ll walk you through the step by step below. First, here’s a quick video tutorial of how I created this gradient rainbow cake, from mixing the colors to applying them:

Disclaimer: this post does contain some affiliate links, meaning I may receive a small commission if you click them and purchase items I’ve recommended. Using these links won’t cost you any extra money, but they do help to keep Sugar & Sparrow up and running. Thank you for your support!

You Will Need:

• A cake that’s been frosted and chilled
• 1.5 batches of vanilla or other light colored buttercream
• Food color gels in rainbow shades. I used colors from The Nifty Fifty Kit (detailed below)
• Plates and spoons for color mixing
• Piping bags
• Scissors
• Ruler

Step 1: Mix Up Your Colors

Divide equal amounts of buttercream across a few plates or in separate mixing bowls. Like I said before, I got a little crazy and mixed up 20 different shades from my Nifty Fifty Kit. The colors I used (in rainbow order) are: Watermelon, Burgundy, Super Red, Soft Pint, Deep Pink, Orange, Peach, Electric Orange, Electric Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Egg Yellow, Electric Green, Leaf Green, Forest Green, Teal, Sky Blue, Navy Blue, Electric Purple, Regal Purple, and Eggplant.

The important thing with these colors is that you have a few different shades of each rainbow color, whether you use the same color in different intensities or more varied colors for each of the seven rainbow hues.

Step 2: Fill Your Piping Bags

Prepare several piping bags (enough for each shade you’ve created) by snipping off a ¼ inch opening off the tip with your scissors, then filling each bag with a different shade. It helps to have disposable piping bags for this step.

Once you’ve got your bags all filled, line them up in the order you want to pipe color-wise. Look at all those piping bags! I was swooning before I even started adding the colors to the cake.

Step 3: Measure Out Sections On The Cake

Using a ruler as your guide, mark off six equal sections with an icing spatula or other sharp object. It’s important that you start with a cake that’s been frosted and chilled so your marks are sharp and unwavering. Place marks horizontally all around the cake so you know where each color should end and a new one should begin. This way, you’ll have nice equal sections of color instead of getting towards the top of the cake and realizing you barely have room for the last few colors.

Note that you’ve marked six equal horizontal sections but have seven colors. This is because the top of the cake will act as its own (seventh) section.

Step 4: Apply The Colors

Now for the fun part! Starting at the bottom of the cake, pipe the purple hues within the bottom section you’ve marked off. I chose to start at the very bottom with the darker purples (Eggplant and Regal Purple) and saved the lighter purple (Electric Purple) for the top of the section. There’s no real pattern here other than that. The cake ends up looking really cool with the dots in a more random order rather than piping lines of the same color. In other words, it’s ok to have some of the darker purples toward the top of the section and put different colored dots next to each other.

Pipe a few stray purple dots into the section that should be blue to help with the gradient effect, then fill the rest of the next section in with the blue hues. Again, I’ve chosen to pipe the darker blue (Navy Blue) toward the bottom of the blue section and the lighter blues (Sky Blue and Teal) toward the top.

Repeat this process in reverse rainbow color order with the rest of your shades. When you get to the top of the cake, pipe all of the red shades. Remember to pipe a few stray red and pink dots down into the orange section to help with the gradient effect.

How cool is this gradient rainbow buttercream cake? I absolutely love color and having my Nifty Fifty Kit made all of my colorful cake dreams come true with this one! It’s well worth having the entire kit in your cake decorating collection. These gels last for ages and save tons of time you would have otherwise spent custom mixing different color gels to get just the right shade. Let me know if you end up making this cake and/or getting the Nifty Fifty Kit! I would love to nerd out on color with you.

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