Sunday, September 2, 2018

pink and white floral wreath cake


It's been a while since my last post! Things have been super busy with work, and then summer with the kids at home, and then vacation, and then after vacation watching the kids while I worked from home until school started ... and now the kids are back in school! It's an exciting year because my oldest started middle school! And my youngest started Kindergarten! Time sure does fly by fast!

Anyhow, back to this cake! I made this for my friend Kim, for her birthday last March, at at time when I was absolutely obsessed with floral wreath cakes! (You'll see several more in the next few upcoming posts!) This one happened to be a coffee chiffon cake, filled with espresso whipped cream, and covered with vanilla whipped cream.


The coffee chiffon layers were baked in three 6-inch round cake pans. Usually I bake two cakes and then slice the in half horizontally to give me four layers, but since chiffon cake is so delicate, I find that they tend to collapse when sliced in half horizontally, so I do three uncut cake layers instead.



After smoothing out my whipped cream frosting as best as I could, I was ready to decorate with buttercream flowers. Unlike this mother's day floral wreath cake, where I piped rosette flowers directly onto the cake, I used this method instead, where I piped my buttercream flowers in advance using a flower nail and pieces of waxed paper. The buttercream flowers are then frozen until I'm ready to use them!


Rather than just adding my pre-piped buttercream flowers directly onto the top of the cake, I first piped a ring of whipped cream dollops on the top, so that I could nestle my flowers easily and position, also allowing them to stay on better. Then I just peeled each flower off of the waxed paper, and placed them in a wreath around the cake.


Once I was happy with my flower placement, I finished it off by piping green buttercream leaves in between and around the flowers.


I love this technique!




This technique allows you to use the best of all the dozens of piped buttercream flowers, and if you work quickly enough you can even move the flowers around before they start to melt.




I especially love the view from the top of the cake, where you can see the flowers in wreath formation.



Happy Birthday, Kim! Hope you enjoyed your cake!



Stay tuned to see more wreath cakes in the next few posts!