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How to Make a Letterboard Cake

I have to give the credit for this cake to one of my Instagram followers. While I am not sure it was her intention was to make her own letterboard cake, a string of messages sparked this cute idea!  

This letterboard cake would be perfect for an announcement, birthday, or any other special event. Since I am sort of out of announcements, I just made it for the heck of it! 

But seriously, how cute would this be for a gender reveal!? Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

Tools and Recipes

All you need for the cake is one batch of your favorite cake recipe or cake mix baked in a square baking dish. If you want to make this a two-tier cake, double up your cake and use some of your extra buttercream to fill the center. 

Here are some cake recipes you may like:

You will also need one batch of buttercream, although I had enough buttercream left over to frost a few cupcakes. 

Aside from the cake, you will also need the following:

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How to Make It

I will say, this was one of the easier cakes I have made. The most time-consuming part was cutting out the individual letters, but that wasn’t very difficult. 

The trick to this cake is just to pipe straight lines. Which is why you see me change directions of piping a few rows in. I noticed that the lines got thinner towards the end of the line. After a while it seemed like they sloped up. Going back and forth seemed to straighten out the lines. 

Other than that little tip, there is really nothing else you need to know to make this cake!

Seven-Minute Frosting

I can’t believe it has taken me this long to share my quick and easy seven-minute frosting with you guys! While I won’t say it’s my favorite buttercream (my Swiss meringue buttercream still takes the cake, literally), it is the perfect frosting to make when you are in a pinch. 

And in case you are wondering if it actually takes seven minutes to make. Yes, it does! The last time I made the frosting I turned on the stopwatch on my phone. From beginning to end (including measuring and sifting) it took just seven minutes!

The reason this frosting is so quick to make is that it’s essentially an American buttercream. That is a buttercream that is just made with butter, powdered sugar, a little milk, and flavoring. But unlike some American buttercreams that can be a little dense and too buttery, this one strikes a good balance.

There is also a little trick involved to ensure your frosting isn’t super dense and totally lifeless. Read on to find out what it is!

How to Make It.

Step number one to making this delicious, yet easy seven-minute frosting is to start with good quality butter. Please do not use margarine or even that baking butter than contains added oil. You want 100% dairy, high fat, unsalted butter. You don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on the super high-quality French butter. But just make sure that it’s real butter made from cream.

Step two is to whip the heck out of the butter. Don’t just whip the butter until it’s “light and creamy”. Whip it, whip it good.

By that I mean, whip it until it turns from a yellow color until an almost ivory white color. It should look like it’s increased in volume and definitely look a lot lighter than when it started. 

This will incorporate lots of air into your frosting so that it’s nice and light and won’t taste or feel overwhelmingly buttery. 

The last step is to sift the powdered sugar into the butter to ensure there are no lumps or clumps and you have the smoothest possible frosting. This eats up quite a few of those seven minutes, but it’s worth every second

After you mix in your sugar, your frosting will probably feel and look a bit dry. Add in your flavoring and a bit of milk, about 1 tablespoon at a time until you have a frosting with a nice creamy consistency. 

And that’s all it takes to get a simple, quick, yet delicious frosting! 

Even though Swiss meringue will always be my favorite of the buttercreams, it doesn’t always make sense to spend the time (and the egg whites) on it. Most of the cakes and cupcakes you have seen on this blog have been made with my seven-minute frosting, not Swiss meringue. 

So if you are just making some cupcakes to bring to work or for an informal event, I highly recommend this version of American buttercream.

If it’s for or special occasion, or you really want to impress your eaters, go with the Swiss version!

Recipe

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Lemon Elderflower Cake

 What can I say about this lemon elderflower cake? Other than it didn’t turn out at all like I had expected. But, in the best way possible!

If you follow me on Instagram, then you already saw a sneak peek of this cake last week. In the comment, I mentioned that this is not what I had planned on the cake looking like. In my head, before I started, I had planned on this being a cake completely covered in a layer lemon buttercream frosting then topped with white and yellow buttercream flowers complete with buttercream leaves. 

Now, I am often overly ambitious when it comes to my baking projects which often leads to a last minute change of plans. In this case, it was just poor planning. I simply didn’t make enough buttercream! I couldn’t even cover the whole dang cake!

Whoops!

But in the end, I think the lack of buttercream led to this beautiful, simple, and rustic cake that perfectly embodies the actual cake within. The lemon elderflower cake layers are just that. Beautiful, simple, rustic, and delicious! The lemon flavor is dominant, but not overpowering and there is a hit of that sweet elderflower with each bite thanks in large part to the elderflower simple syrup that I drizzled over each layer. 

If you have never had elderflower flavored anything, then you may be a bit skeptical. Not to worry, it’s not an overly floral taste, like rose or lavender, so you won’t think you are eating soap. It really just provides an extra layer of sweetness and perfectly compliments the lemon.

However, if you are just not into elderflower at all, ditch it! Just make a lemon cake! It will still be wonderful!

How to Make It

The first step to making this cake, and any cake, really, is to sift the dry ingredients together. I used to skip this step, but now I know that this simple step really changes the texture of a cake. Sifting the flour creates a much lighter, less dense cake.

Set the flour aside and move on to the lemon. First zest one or two lemons until you have about 2 tablespoons of zest. Then squeeze the juice out of the lemon. You will be adding the lemon juice to the milk along with the elderflower liquor.

Speaking of which, if you have never had elderflower liqueur in a drink before, it is delicious! I don’t drink a lot to begin with, so I didn’t have any elderflower liqueur on hand. But I did find mini bottles at my local liquor store. I highly recommend just getting 1-2 mini bottles instead of 1 big bottle unless you plan on drinking the rest of it.

Now that we have that covered, lets move on to making the batter.

Cream together the butter and sugar then add in the lemon zest.

Mix in the eggs one at a time until they are completely incorporated into the butter. You don’t want the egg-butter mixture looking likes it’s separated or curdled.

Now mix in the dry and wet ingredients, alternating between the two. I like to add the dry ingredients in three parts and the wet ingredients in two. So it looks something like this: dry, wet, dry, wet, dry. Always start and end with dry.

One of my biggest cake tips I have for you is to line the bottom of the cake pay with parchment paper! This will make getting the cake out super easy even if the cake is still warm. I still recommend spraying the pans with baking spray, too. But this is just added insurance. 

Then portion the batter between the cake pans. I like to use a scale to make sure that the amount of batter in each one is pretty even. But that may be overkill. You can just eyeball it.

A new thing I tried with these cakes is using the Wilton Bake-even strips. Then insulate the cake pan so that ideally your cakes bake evenly on top (no weird dome that you have to slice off), and they don’t caramelize around the edges. 

Verdict: They sort of helped. One cake was very even, but slightly caramelized. One cake wasn’t as even but not at all caramelized. Overall, they turned out better than they would have without the strips, so it was well worth the money for these!

How to Assemble and Decorate the Cake

Then the cakes come out of the oven and they magically stack and decorate themselves! Isn’t that a fun trick!

Actually, this is where I really dropped the ball and stopped taking photos. I think because I was in such a tizzy over the buttercream that I didn’t get any photos of the actual decorating process. What a horrible blogger I am!

I did capture part of the decorating process, and that is the little flowers that I did manage to make!

These little guys were so easy to make with my #107 piping tip. You just press the tip to a sheet of parchment paper, squeeze, and turn your wrist slightly which produces the cute little drop flowers. Then I just dotted the center with a little yellow buttercream.

I put these in the freezer to harden while I worked on the rest of the cake. 

Actually, the rest of the cake was pretty easy to assemble.

Step 1: Cut the cake into two layers for four total layers (if you want, you can leave it as a two layer cake).

Step 2: Brush elderflower simple syrup over each of the cake layers (recipe and directions below)

Step 3: Spread a thin layer of buttercream on the first layer, top with some lemon curd (optional), then top with another cake layer. Repeat until all layers have been added.

Step 4: Spread buttercream all over the top and sides of the cake, then use an offset spatula or bench scraper to scrape the sides of the cake to create a naked cake look. Leave a thin layer of buttercream on top.

Step 5: Pour some lemon curd over the top of the cake and spread out to cover the top, pushing some of the curd over the edges. You may need to heat up your lemon curd to make it more liquid if you are using a store bought version.

Step 6: Add the flowers in whatever arrangement you like. Because they are frozen, they are easy to peel off the parchment and stick onto the cake.

Step 7: Admire your handy work!

Truly, this cake wasn’t hard to decorate and assemble once I realized my mistake and that I wouldn’t have enough buttercream to achieve the look I was after.

And, making naked cakes is really easy for even those with no cake decorating experience because you don’t have to worry about your frosting being perfect! Actually, you want it to look imperfect!

I, for one, like the limited buttercream on this cake because it lets the lemon elderflower cake shine through. 

Of course, if you are a frosting lover, you may want to double up on the buttercream recipe so you can cover your whole cake like I was supposed to!

Tools and Recipe

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Four-Leaf Clover Cookie Cake

This may be called a cookie cake, but it is not the same giant chocolate chip cookie cake you buy at the mall. This cookie cake is a cross between a sugar cookie and a cake.  They are all the rage on Instagram right now! And they are basically like my new favorite thing! I am slightly obsessed. 

If you aren’t as obsessed as I am, this version of a cookie cake is two giant sugar cookies layered together with buttercream and topped with even more buttercream. The original version, also includes some flowers, macarons, and other adornments. They are super cute. 

But for this four-leaf clover version, I stayed with my favorite style of decorating cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. Which is just using a bunch of different piping tips to cover the surface. 

How to Make It

If you can make a cake or decorate a cookie, you can make this cookie cake! 

Start by cutting out two really large cookies in the shape of a four-leaf clover. Don’t have a giant four-leaf cookie cutter? No worries! 

I print out a large four-leaf clover then cut it out to use as a template for cutting out my cookie dough. I found it easier to roll out the dough, then transfer it to the baking sheet before cutting the dough. It ensures that the dough doesn’t lose its shape. 

On top of the first layer pipe dots of buttercream around the edge, then top with the second cookie layer. 

Use various large piping tips to create different shapes. 

Piping tips used:

  • Round Dots – Wilton #1A
  • Roses & Drop Flower – Wilton #2D
  • Spikey Dots – Wilton #8B
  • Drop Flower – Wilton #1M

I also like using different shades of the same color, which isn’t really very well represented here. 

For an extra little flair, top with sprinkles or glitter. 

I used this gold dust I found at Michaels, and while it’s not super visable in photos, it adds a really pretty shine to the buttercream in person. 

All that’s left is to dig right in. You can cut this anyone way you like! Or just break off a piece here and there. Make your own rules for this unconventional cake!!

Recipes Used:

Sugar Cookies

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

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Super Soft Sugar Cookies (Lofthouse Style)

Over the years I have had friends tell me that my sugar cookies remind them of the Lofthouse cookies that we all know and love. The main difference is that the cookies that I make when I decorate cookies are not quite as soft and pillowy (otherwise, they wouldn’t be good for decorating). 

Since I hear that so often, I have long thought that I need to try my hand at making my own super soft sugar cookies, just like Lofthouse. There are lots of copycat recipes online, but none of them felt quite right.

First of all, a lot of them contain sour cream, heavy cream, shortening, etc. All things I do not normally associate with sugar cookies. 

Second, the ingredients are right on the package! So we know exactly what goes into making those super soft sugar cookies!

Let’s take a look, shall we?

(I feel a little bit like Alton Brown, right now, so forgive me a while I nerd out…or just skip ahead.)

Ingredients

A quick Google search of “Lofthouse Cookie Ingredients” will direct you to Walmart’s website where they list the very ingredients for the cookies we are trying to mimic. 

Ingredients: Sugar, Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Margarine (Palm Oil, Water, Soybean Oil, Salt, Mono- & Diglycerides, Annatto Extract Color, Calcium Disodium Edta [Preservative], Artificial Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate), Eggs, Corn Starch, Contains 2% Or Less of: Water, Vegetable Oil (Palm Kernel Oil And/Or Palm Oil And/Or Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil [Cottonseed And/Or Soybean Oil]), Dextrin, Soy Lecithin (Emulsifier), Natural & Artificial Flavors, Skim Milk, Confectioner’s Glaze (Lac Resin), Leavening (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Sulfate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Colors (Carmine (Color), Red 3, Red 40, Blue 1, Blue 1 Lake, Blue 2, Blue2 Lake, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 5, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 6, Yellow 6 Lake), Carnauba Wax, Food Starch-Modified, Polysorbate 60, Sodium Propionate (Preservative). Contains Egg, Milk, Soy, Wheat. Manufactured In A Facility That Processes: Peanuts, Tree Nuts.

Ok, some of the ingredients look like things you would find in your high school chemistry textbook, but actually most of it is stuff you would probably already have at home. 

  • Sugar – well, that’s an easy one. Sort of….is it granulated sugar, caster sugar, or confectioners sugar? I am going to guess since it’s listed first (and ingredients are always listed in descending order by weight) that it is both granulated (for the cookie) and confectioners sugar (for the icing).
  • Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid) – This is actually cake flour. The cake flour helps make these cookies extra soft and light!
  • Margarine (Palm Oil, Water, Soybean Oil, Salt, Mono- & Diglycerides, Annatto Extract Color, Calcium Disodium Edta [Preser vative], Artificial Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate) – Another easy one. I bet margarine is both used in the cookie and the frosting. However, I also bet that it is used instead of butter because it’s cheaper and more shelf stable. Butter will actually yield a more tender cookie, which is exactly what we are trying to achieve.
  • Eggs – Totally self-explanatory
  • Corn Starch – Another deceiving ingredient. Is it for the cookie or the icing? Since confectioners sugar is a mix of very fine sugar mixed with cornstarch, I am going to guess this is part of the confectioner’s sugar that goes in the frosting. 
  • Water – This one is tricky. I know I add a bit of water to buttercream to help loosen it a bit, so maybe that’s what it’s for. 
  • Vegetable Oil (Palm Kernel Oil And/Or Palm Oil And/Or Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil [Cottonseed And/Or Soybean Oil]) – This is another tricky one. Oil is sometimes added to cookies to make them a bit more tender. And since these cookies are definitely tender, I’ll bet it’s added to the cookie dough for that very reason.
  • Dextrin – This is a thickening agent that is probably used for the icing so that it stays on the cookie and doesn’t melt or slide off.
  • Soy Lecithin (Emulsifier) – If you read your labels carefully, you will realize that this ish is in everything! As you can tell by the parenthetical it is used as an emulsifier so that the water and fats stay together and don’t separate. Probably for the icing.
  • Natural & Artificial Flavors – While they don’t explicitly say what flavors (gotta keep some secrets), it’s almost certainly vanilla and maybe almond extract.
  • Skim Milk – The use of skim milk surprises me since I find that whole milk is certainly better for baking. But I am not exactly sure where it fits in. I’ll bet that it’s in the dough as another way to keep the cookies moist. If it were added to the frosting, it wouldn’t be shelf stable. 
  • Confectioner’s Glaze (Lac Resin) – This is a baking wax that helps certain ingredients set, like butter, margarine, or chocolate. I’ll bet this is used to help keep the frosting shelf stable.
  • Leavening (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Sulfate, Monocalcium Phosphate) – We all know what baking soda is, but what about those other two items? Guess what, that’s baking powder! Sodium Aluminum Sulfate and Monocalcium Phosphate are the compounds that make baking powder. And we know, specifically, a baking powder that contains aluminum. 

And that’s about where I am going to stop because the rest of the ingredients are just the colors to help the cookies look a certain way. 

But holy cow, that is a lot of ingredients for a simple cookie, right?

And you know what I didn’t see on that list? Sour cream, heavy cream, or shortening. Actually, most of the ingredients look like the very same ingredients in my favorite sugar cookie recipe. Shocking! 

(Note the sarcasm). 

How to Make Them

Okay, now that we know what ingredients go into the cookies we can figure out how to actually make them!

Lucky for you, I’ve already done that part.  

You’re welcome.

First, cream together the butter (or margarine) and sugar making sure to get the butter super light and fluffy because the air bubbles will help to keep the cookies pillowy soft. 

Next add in the oil, milk, and egg. The oil and milk add a bit more fat and moisture to the cookies so they don’t dry out as much. 

Then add in the vanilla and almond extracts for flavor. 

The last step is to mix in the flour. I strongly encourage you to use cake flour instead of all-purpose flour because it does make a huge difference. 

Regular all-purpose flour has a higher protein content than cake flour which means that it can become a bit tougher and crunchy. That’s perfectly fine for any other cookie, but not these. You want them to be super soft! So go with the cake flour!

(If you don’t want to go out and buy cake flour, here is how you can make your own substitute)

For even more airiness, sift the flour, baking soda, and baking powder into the bowl then mix everything together until just incorporated. 

The best part about these cookies is that they require no rolling out or cutting. Just scoop out balls of dough, roll them between the palms of your hands, then press them down to flatten ever so slightly.

Bake the cookies at 325 for about 12 minutes, until they are just barely starting to brown around the edges. 

Now, resist the urge to scarf down a cookie immediately out of the oven. Actually, while they are warm, you may think they are TOO soft! They will just fall right apart. But once they cool, they will be perfectly soft and pillowy in the center, with a slight crunch around the outside. 

While you wait for them to cool, you can make your frosting. 

How to Make the Frosting

The Lofthouse cookie frosting is obviously made with lots of stabilizers and preservatives, as we can see in the list above. That is needed for those cookies since they sit on the shelf for God knows how long before we actually buy them and eat them.

Since I certainly don’t bake with dextrin and soy lecithin, and I assume you don’t either, we are just going to make a classic American buttercream to add to the top of our cookies. 

To make the frosting, beat together soft butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and a bit of water until super creamy and fluffy. 

If it’s too dry or crumbly, add a bit more water.

If you want to add some color to your frosting, add a couple drops and mix in. 

Then spread the frosting over top of the cooled cookies and decorate however you like!

I like to top off my frosted sugar cookies with some sprinkles because that’s how you would find them in the store.

Now they are especially fun and festive. 

But more importantly, they are super soft, sweet, and delicious! Just like the Lofthouse cookies, I would find at the store.

Somehow, these taste even better because of that one secret ingredient…

…love.

Too cheesy?

I know, I rolled my eyes at myself.

The real secret ingredient, in my opinion, is the lack of additives and preservatives. There is just something about a cookie you know isn’t going to last for weeks that just tastes so wonderful!
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Buttercream Flower Heart Cake

If you have followed this blog or my Instagram long enough, you know that I love a good floral pattern. Most of the time you will find me adding flowers to cookies. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t perfect for cakes, too. 

Especially this Valentine’s Day cake in the shape of a heart!

The great thing about this buttercream flower heart cake is that both the flowers and the heart shape of the cake are actually pretty easy to achieve if you have the right tools on hand. 

All you need is a round cake pan, a square cake pan, and a few piping tips. You got all that, right? 😉

Tools Needed:

Well, pretty much all you need is a couple of cake pans and some piping tips. Okay, and maybe a few other things like food coloring. 

For the cakes, my recommendation is to make sure your round cake pan is equal in size to your square pan, if not smaller. I.e. if you have a 9″ square pan, use a 9″ round cake pan, too. However, if you only have a 9″ square pan and a 8″ round pan, you can cut the edges of the square cake to make an 8″ cake (which is what I did). Does that make sense?

To make the various shades of pink and green I mixed together some of my Americolor gel food coloring:

  • Lightest pink color is a mixture of taupe and light pink
  • Medium shade of pink is just a couple drops of maroon
  • Darkest shade of pink is watermelon and coral red
  • Light green is avocado
  • Dark green is forest green

To create the flower and leaf shapes, I used the following piping tips:

  • For the roses I used a #2D and #1M piping tips
  • The dark green leaf was created with #366 tip
  • For the light green blobs I used a #32 tip

Most of these piping tips come in this piping tip set. 

How to Make It:

Start by baking a round cake and a square cake in the flavor of your choice.  You can even use your favorite boxed mix if you like! Level the cakes so that they are both flat and both the same height. 

Cut the round cake in half so that you have two equal pieces. 

Place the to half rounds along two of the edges of your square cake to form a heart shape. How easy was that!?

Cover the entire cake in a layer of plain frosting so that all the pieces of the heart are stuck together. This layer of frosting doesn’t need to be pretty because it will get covered up. 

Divide the rest of the icing up in to several smaller batches and colors them in various shades. 

To decorate the cake, start by making the large roses to fill in most of the empty space of the cake. Then go in and fill in some of the holes with the leaves. 

Add more flowers and leaves until you can no longer see any of the cake underneath. 

You could totally make this! And I didn’t even tell you the best part. 

To make this cake you don’t even have to make anything from scratch. You could make your favorite boxed cake mix and even used the canned frosting. While I would highly recommend making your own frosting (this is my favorite buttercream recipe and this is my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe), I know not everyone has the time or desire to make frosting from scratch.

Plus, there is something so nostalgic about store-bought cake mix and frosting out of a can, right?

Now you have no excuse but to make this for your sweetheart, your kids, your mom, your dog, yourself. Whoever your Valentine happens to be!

 

The Best Buttercream Frosting Recipe

It may surprise you to hear that I am not much of a frosting person. Whenever I eat cake, I typically eat around the frosting, leaving a huge heap of it on my plate. 

But of course, there are always exceptions. The exception is this buttercream. Every time I make it I get so many compliments on how light, airy, and not-too-sweet it is. People are used to that dense, buttery, sickeningly sweet buttercream so this one is basically like a breath of fresh air. 

There are actually three main types of buttercream frosting (that I am aware of): American, Italian, and Swiss. The American version is what we are used to. It is basically just butter and sugar mix together. American buttercream is totally fine in moderation and is really good if you need to make some intricate designs on your cake or cupcake. But when it piled on top of said cake or cupcake, it’s just too much. 

Italian meringue buttercream incorporates meringue (fluffy egg whites), which makes it super light and airy. To make Italian meringue, you heat up sugar and water until it boils, then pour it into to a stand mixer bowl that is whipping up the egg whites. The only reason I don’t like this version is that making Italian meringue dirties up one extra pan and you have to make sure the sugar get’s to the perfect temperature or you risk ruining your meringue.

I prefer the Swiss meringue buttercream because it has all the benefits of the Italian version but with a lot less hassle. Instead of heating up water and sugar, you actually heat up the egg whites with the sugar and whisk them over a double boiler until the sugar has dissolved. Then you whip up the egg whites until you have stiff peaks. I do this all in the bowl of my stand mixer so that I only have one bowl to clean up in the end. 

Once the meringue has cooled, you add in your butter. Now this is where I have gotten a little thrown off in the past, and I know other people struggle with this too. So many times I think I have ruined my buttercream because it looks super lumpy and gross, like the picture on the left. But, that’s just a step in the process to getting it nice and smooth. 

When you slowly add the butter  to the egg whites, it’s almost like trying to mix together oil and water. They just don’t want to go together without a little coaxing. So after just a little mixing it will appear that the frosting has separated. Just keep mixing and you will get a creamy, smooth buttercream frosting!

The best part about this frosting is that it goes with anything! You can add other flavors to it, but the plain vanilla can top off any cake flavor. 

It’s also sturdy enough to pipe any details, like flowers, leaves, ruffles, etc. If you have seen any of my cakes or cupcakes that have some design on them, this is the frosting I use. 

Its also the only buttercream frosting that I don’t scrape off my cake because it’s just too good to let go to waste!

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How to Make Floral Inspired Cupcakes

Decorating cakes and cupcakes has been my latest obsession. I have been jumping on every opportunity to make cupcakes for friends just to practice and hone my skills. 

I’ve actually found that for the most part, decorating cupcakes (I won’t speak to cakes since I haven’t had as much experience with them) is MUCH easier than decorating cookies. It requires a lot less time. And you have license to be a little more abstract with your decoration, particularly flowers. 

Of course, you could make some super realistic looking flowers or decorations that I am sure would challenge my previous theory, but for now, this girl is perfectly happy sticking to some fun and easy ways to decorate cupcakes! 

Which is why I thought I should show you my 5 favorite cupcake decorations! They are all “floral inspired”. I don’t want to call them flowers, because like I said below, you may have to really use your imagination to consider them flowers. But when paired all together, they look like a beautiful bouquet!

This is kind of a tiered flower with two layers of petals and dot in the middle. For this flower I used a big round tip, like a 2A. For bigger petals use a 1A, smaller use a 12. 

These hydrangea inspired cupcakes are my favorite because they are just so easy! Using a 2D tip, you just dot the top of the cupcake in these pretty little flowers. They piping tip does all the work for you!

And because hydrangeas are typically multicolored, I like to add multiple colors of icing into one piping bag so that every flower has a little of each color. I recommend sticking with 2 colors, and not doing any more than three unless you are going for a specific look. 

This rose decoration is one that I make a lot, even when I am not going for a floral inspired cupcake. It’s just such a beautiful cupcake decoration. But when you add a couple leaves, boom! it’s a rose!

For these cupcakes, use a 1B or 2B (any closed star tip) and make spiral on top of the cupcake. The 1B will give you a more open rose, like the one on the left. The 2B or smaller tip will give you a tighter rose, like the one on the right. 

For the leaves, use a 366 or any large leaf tip. Leaves are really easy to make. You just press the tip into the side of the flower, squeeze a blob of icing out of the tip while gradually moving the tip away from the cupcake. Then stop squeezing and swiftly pull the tip away creating a little tip.

This daisy looking cupcake is very similar to the cupcake at the very top except there is only one layer of petals. I also used a bigger round tip, a 1A, to create the fatter petals and a 12 tip to make the yellow center. But again, any big round tip will work!

To create the multicolored petals, I wiped a little bit of pink icing on one side of a piping bag, then filled the bag with the white icing. That way, just a bit of pink would streak the petals as the were piped out of the bag. 

Now this is my favorite cupcake. It combined the flowers that are on each of the cupcakes into one bouquet! I like to start with the rose, since it’s the biggest, then surround with hydrangeas, dots, and leaves. With these, you can really do anything you want! Be creative! 

See, you can totally make these. Just use your favorite cupcake recipe (here’s one!) and your favorite buttercream recipe (I’ll be sharing mine soon!) and get to decorating! 

To see a list of all the tools and ingredients I used for these cupcakes, see below (Note: this post contains affiliate links, which means every time you follow the link and purchase something, I get a small commission which I’ll probably use to buy more butter, sugar, and piping bags)

 

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Autumn Wreath Maple Pecan Cake

Autumn Wreath Maple Pecan Cake

I feel bad for Thanksgiving. As soon as the page has been turned on October and Halloween is over, everyone sets their sights on Christmas. Starbucks already has their red cups out, Christmas decorations are front and center at just about every store, and I have already seen a few people put up their lights and trees. 

And even though I love Christmas as much as the next person, lets pump the breaks here folks and give Thanksgiving it’s fair share! And even though Thanksgiving is really all about the food (nothing wrong with that), it should also be a time to reflect on everything that we are thankful for. 

Autumn Wreath Cake

One thing I am definitely thankful for is this cake! I know I say everything I make is good (well, not everything, but anything that ends up on the blog), but this cake is AMAZING. And I don’t throw that term around all willy nilly. I mean it!

I started with a basic vanilla cake, but I swapped out some of the sugar for maple syrup and then folded in some toasted pecans. When I tasted the batter, I was actually a little disappointed in the maple flavor. It just wasn’t popping like I thought it would. Then, when I stated a bite after it had baked, that maple flavor really exploded! 

The cake by itself tastes like a stack of pancakes that has been drenched in butter and maple syrup. I mean….come on! How could you refuse a slice of that? The pecans not only add a nice crunch, but that deliciously nutty, buttery flavor. 

Maple Pecan Cake

But it’s not just about the cake flavor, its also about the decoration. This is the first time I had really attempted to decorate a cake this elaborately. Just like with cookie decorating, I picked up most of my tricks from watching lots and lots of You Tube videos (you can learn anything on YouTube). One of my favorite channels is How To Cake It! You must watch her videos, she is amazing!

Maple Pecan Cake

Anyways, I started by leveling all my cakes and removing the caramelized edges. Because I wanted this to be a “naked” cake, I wanted all the edges to look perfect and to be able to see the little pecan pieces through the buttercream. 

maple-pecan-cake-14

In between each layer, I spread on a generous portion of Italian meringue buttercream and the scattered on some toasted pecan pieces. Once all the layers had been stacked up, I topped it off with the rest of the buttercream and spread the excess down the sides of the cake. I made sure to fill in any gaps between the layers. Then, with a bench scraper, I scraped off all the excess. 

While the cake chilled in the fridge, I made the wreath decorations. The leaves are made out of various colors of fondant rolled together and cut out with some leaf shaped pie crust cutters. The branches are made out of melted chocolate, piped out to fit on top of the cake. And the flowers are piped out with buttercream using some really awesome techniques that were also learned from YouTube. 

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Once the branches had hardened and the flowers were hard from the freezer, I assembled everything into a wreath! Doesn’t it look pretty!

I think it would be perfect as the center piece for a Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving dinner! Or just make the cake (sans decor) and eat it anytime. Trust me…you won’t regret it. 

Maple Pecan Cake

You can watch how I made the cake in the short video below. I apologize in advance for the poor quality, I am still learning how to work my new camera and the editing software. But I am hoping to do a lot more videos, since that is practically how I learned everything I know. 😉

 

PIN NOW, MAKE LATER

Autumn Wreath Maple Pecan Cake

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