My sister’s buttercream flower and succulent baby shower cake

So a few months ago I became kind of obsessed with making a buttercream rose cake for my sister's baby shower. I first saw the idea on this blog and wanted to do it. A month out from the baby shower, I started testing out different colours of icing. I bought tons of those gel food colourings and a few pounds of icing from the grocery store, and started testing.



I also watched a few hours worth of youtube vidoes, and bought a handful of new piping tips. Then I started practicing. I would listen to a podcast with my headphones and pipe dozens of roses, peonies, succulents. I did that each evening for a week, throwing my results in the garbage each time.













This is what I learned:

1. You need to cut little parchment paper squares for the flowers so you can put a cookie sheet of them into the freezer for 15 minutes so they are hard enough to transfer to your cake.
2. Using two shades of icing in each piping bag makes the flowers look so much more legit. also the lighter colours seem to look more realistic
3. Make way, way more than you think you will need. That way you can layer then to create more height, and also you can pick and choose your favourite ones.
4. You need one of those little flower nails. It lets you twirl the flower around in your hand while you are piping, which is 100% necessary.
5. You want to keep everything pretty chilly while you are working. The icing needs to be room temperature to actually work with it, but after the flowers are make, put them into the fridge or freezer.

Another thing I did after watching so many youtube videos: I used pliers to bend the top edge of my piping tips to really make the edges of the petals super thin and delicate, just like a real flower.

I also saved some icing in a piping bag to add some little rosettes at the end to fill in any gaps in the cake. I finished the cake the night before the shower, and in the morning mom and I drove the 1.5 hours to Moncton for the shower. The cake was way too high to be contained in a cake box, so we just carefully surrounded the cake in an open topped box with blankets and pillows. I was so nervous!! Anyway, the cake arrived safe and sound and it was a total hit.