With the unveiling of the Valentine's Collection, I shared the flower adorned chocolate heart cake (below). As promised, here is a post devoted to the Swiss Buttercream I used.
We used the same tips and the same buttercream to make these Peony inspired Cupcakes, too.
I used these new Flowers Tips to create the flowers. Just one little squeeze creates an entire flower - amazing. They were so easy to use, almost magical. Emma and I had so much fun with them. We created the cake and cupcakes.
Large Leaf Tip
18" Disposable Pastry Bag
I used these flowers as color inspiration, but they also remind me of Peonies - especially the tip with the dots in the middle! I love the soft peachy, pink tone. Also, I love the muted olive green of the bay leaf I used. You could also make a deep navy blue to mimic the privet berries, but we used the real ones to garnish. Actual blueberries would look darling, too.
Swiss Buttercream Recipe4 egg whites
1 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
4 sticks of butter, room temp
1 cup of powdered sugar
food coloring
Create a double boiler by placing a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water. Add sugar and egg whites. Whisk constantly over the simmering water until the sugar has melted. It will feel smooth between fingers, when sugar granules have dissolved.
Pour egg white mixture in a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Whisk on high for 5-8 minutes until it creates a glossy meringue and has cooled completely. Add butter 1 tablespoon at a time. Slowly mix in powdered sugar until smooth. Add vanilla and food coloring.
Double Boiler made with glass bowl over a pan of simmering water.
The egg mixture is whirling around, turning into gloriously glossy meringue.
In case you've never made meringue - this is it!
Emma adding room temperature butter into the meringue, a little at a time.
The butter transforms the meringue into swiss buttercream.
To color the butter cream, I started with these flowers for inspiration.
1) I started with a small bowl of about 1/4 of the butter cream.
2) I added a touch of red and a half touch of yellow to make the pinkish peach. This is the darkest pink.
3) In another bowl, I put 1/3 of the buttercream and added a little of the pink mixture - this created the palest pink. Now, you can add more white to the deepest pink if you'd like to lighten it up.
4) For the green, I used a lot more yellow than blue to make it the deep olive tone. You'll need a lot of food coloring to get this deep of a color.
For the cake, we piped our flowers onto a parchment lined baking sheet, then put them in the fridge to chill. It only takes 10 minutes or so. Then we transferred them onto the cake. For the cupcakes, we piped right on them - but this is a little riskier, as they don't all turn out perfectly.
For step-by-step tips for piping the flowers for the Heart Cake, read the blog post, here.
Small Sheet Pan
Parchment Paper (it helped to tape it to the pan)
Products Used :
Large Leaf Tip
18" Disposable Pastry Bag
Small Sheet Pan
Parchment Paper (it helped to tape it to the pan)
For decorating tips and creating the heart cake, see this post with a step-by-step video.
