Welcome to How To Cook That: A Guide to Creating a Beautiful Flowercake
I am Ann Reardon, and today we are going to make this pretty flowercake using just buttercream for those decorations. For the filling between the layers, we will be using mascarpone, cream cheese, icing sugar, and vanilla. I'll put all the recipe quantities on the howtocookthat.net website in grams and ounces and cups for you, and there's a link to that below.
To start, mix together the mascarpone, cream cheese, icing sugar, and vanilla until it's combined. This will give your cake a rich and creamy filling that's perfect for layering between the cake layers. Next, we'll move on to making the syrup that will be brushed onto the cake. For this, you'll need sugar, water, and coffee. Add the sugar to the water and heat it until it is dissolved, then add in the coffee and stir that through well.
Now it's time to make the cake itself. I'm using my sponge cake recipe, and I'll link you to that video in the blog post too. To assemble the cake, brush on as much or as little of that coffee syrup as you like, then add a generous amount of the cream cheese filling. The syrup together with the filling will give it a bit of a tiramisu sort of flavor to the cake. Stack on the next layer, more syrup, loads of more filling and then the top layer.
Once your cake is assembled, mix up a batch of my buttercream and cover the whole cake in a thin layer of it. You could use ganache or whatever frosting you like for this part, we're just covering the whole cake. Use a spatula to smooth out the top and the sides of the cake. Then run the curved end of the spatula around the base of the cake in a straight line and then repeat that all the way up the sides.
For our flowers, we want to mix different colors, and you can do whatever you like. I am using a green, pinky-colored frosting, purple-y colors, yellow, and a little bit of uncolored frosting. Take a flower spike - this just makes it easy to twirl whatever you are piping, that is why we have one of these. Put a little bit of frosting on it and then a piece of non-stick baking paper on top.
Pipe a cylinder of yellow frosting onto the flower spike, then add some extra bits on top there. Just squeeze and pull up, squeeze and pull up so that it makes the center of your flower. Next take some pink icing and a 125 piping tip and pipe around the center all the way around. Then add petals going up and down, and just up around and down. Keep going around like that until you are happy with the size of your flower.
Repeat that process with different colored pinks so that you get some variation on your cake, then put them in the freezer to go firm. Using your palest pink make some little flowers just piping up across and in, up across and in. Keep going so that you have four little petals. To make a rose bud, pipe a center in whatever color you have spare, and then wrap it around in the green.
Pipe the flower color in the center using a 349 tip twisting as you go. Then take a knife and close up the bud so you can just see a bit of the pink. For some extra greenery, pipe a blob of green then pipe spikes on the top and all over it, around the sides. Place it in the freezer to go firm.
And once it is firm, pipe a little dot of white icing on the end of each spike. Add some icing in the center of the cake just to raise up the middle flowers so it is not completely flat so it looks a bit more like a bunch. Add one of your bigger flowers and some rose buds around it. Then pipe on some green on the side and add your next flower into place.
If you don't pipe that green on first, you might find it a little bit hard to get in between the two flowers without bumping them. Continue to add more and more until you have covered the whole top of the cake. If you live somewhere hot like I do, you'll need to work fairly fast before they soften.
Or you can just put them back into the freezer while you are working. If you love How To Cook That, share the video and give it a thumbs up. If you're new here, subscribe for more cakes, chocolates, and desserts, click here to checkout my other videos, and here for the recipe.
If you like this style of cake follow Ivenovenon Instagram, she has been piping in this style for years now and she is really brilliant. She doesn't know I'm giving her a shout out, but I just have to mention it. And that's it! With these tips and techniques, you should be able to create your own beautiful flowercake using just buttercream decorations. Happy baking!