Spring Wreath Cake
Spring Wreath Cake: How to make a buttercream cake wreath with small decorative touches such as a cherry blossom, cookie moss, and a nest of birds. Beautiful for spring occasions like Easter, Baby Showers and Mother’s Day.
Easter cakes seem to be my thing. In the past five years, each spring, I have made a different cake with Easter in mind. All of this began in 2013 when I made my speckled egg cake. It’s a cake that has stood the test with so many people making it. In 2014, there were the Chocolate Bunny Cake and the Easter Basket Cake. Today’s cake features the Cookie Moss Cake from 2015. You’ll see how I did it in the tutorial. The year 2016 was a downer, but 2017 has come back with a Blackberry Lime Cake. I wanted to make a cake this year that would work for Easter, but also for other springtime events such as bridal showers and baby showers. Today’s cake is perfect for that!
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This cake has everything that spring is about. It includes berries, leaves, cherry blossoms and a nest of chocolate eggs. The vibrant and muted shades of green create a beautiful backdrop for the white flowers. If you’re curious, yes, cherry blossoms are white. The three years I lived in Washington, DC, where I tracked the peak bloom every year to get my family downtown for the best photos, taught me a lot about cherry trees. Over 100 different cherry trees produce flowers ranging from white with a yellow centre to white with a pink centre to pink on pink. I went with white and yellow because I liked how the mini yellow eggs looked with the green. And…. If we want to get technical, a Cherry Blossom only has five petals, whereas most of my flowers have six. It was hard to pipe a five-petal flower.
It’s fine! Buttercream is forgiving, which makes it the perfect buttercream to use. It’s definitely necessary, since I am not a piping expert. Buttercream is a much more delicious alternative to fondant. Who can look at the Korean buttercream flowers on Instagram and not want to be as talented? This cake is about imperfect flowers and leaves that look better when they are grouped. This cake is a winner for all buttercream lovers!
Share a picture of your finished design with me via Instagram! I would love to see how you use this idea. Use thecakeblog to let us all know. Tag @thecakeblog. Now you can share your photos via Pinterest. Happy spring baking, everyone.
SPRING WREATH CRAKE
Bake your cake and assemble it. Frost the outside of the cake with buttercream. Refrigerate until both the cake and frosting have firmed up. Gather decorating supplies. Divide the remaining frosting into five bowls, and tint them according to the following ratios. Divide the frosting to make sure you have enough. When tinting frosting, use very small amounts to achieve the desired colour. You can easily add more, but it’s impossible to remove the excess. Shades will darken over time, with air exposure and refrigeration.
Use approximately eight drops of brown chocolate gel to tint 3/4 cup white frosting.
To tint half a cup of white frosting dark green, use two drops each of chocolate brown, leaf green, and lemon yellow gel.
Use a small amount of vibrant green frosting to tint 1/4 cup of light green white frosting. This is a simple way to create a lighter shade which perfectly complements a darker shade.
Use one drop of lemon yellow gel to tint 1/4 cup of white frosting yellow.
Half a cup of white frosting is left.
Fit couplers to the piping bags and fill them with frosting.
Place a dot of frosting on the flower nail. Press down on the parchment square to attach it firmly to the flower nail.
Use a tip to create large rippled leaves. Hold the bag with the narrow end in the middle, and the wide tip towards the outside. While moving the tip into an upside-down U, squeeze and wiggle to create frosting ripples. Once the U shape is completed, stop squeezing. Make four or five leaves.
Use a tip to make small, smooth leaves. Hold the bag with the narrow end facing outwards and the wide end facing inwards. While gliding up and down (without wiggle), squeeze the bag in an upside-down U. Imagine yourself going up, making a tight turn and then coming back down. When the U is completed, stop squeezing. This one is fun to play with. You can make it longer, shorter or wider by changing the U shape. Make four or five leaves.
Use a tip to make cherry blossoms. Hold the bag with the narrow end in the middle, and the wide tip towards the outside. Then, squeeze the bag in a small back-and-forth motion (like an upside-down U), starting at the middle of the nail and ending there. Squeeze the bag and then release. Rotate the nail slightly and repeat the motion to the left of the previous petal. To complete the circle, repeat, making 5-6 petals. Then, using the #1 tip and yellow buttercream, pipe tiny dots in a circle pattern. Make 10 or 11.
Always make more than you need! All leaves and flowers should be refrigerated until they become completely solid.
Watch the video to learn more about this process.
Use a tip to pipe a circle on the brown buttercream. Use a tip to pipe a line from the outside of the wreath inside, with a slight angle. Repeat, piping small angled arcs all around the wreath at roughly 1.5-inch intervals. This is the same as the wrapping that wraps all around a grapevine wreath in order to keep it together.
Use a tip to pipe some squiggly twigs over the 2/3 of the wreath. Leave one section unfilled.
Four small moss cookie mounds can be made by overlapping four small moss biscuits. Learn how to make them with my tutorial. It’s only 6 to 8 cookies you need, but make extras to account for breakage or flexibility in assembling them. Make a full batch and use the extras to decorate cupcakes or serve. You can also make half a batch or less.
Use tip to pipe a large, circular mound of brown buttercream onto the moss cookie, leaving a small indentation at the centre. This is the bird’s nest. Put two or three mini-eggs in the middle of the nest.
The buttercream leaves can be added after the moss cookies.
Place blossoms on the wreath as desired. I placed them where the cookies and leaves met to give the intersection a polished look. The tapered-head mini offset spatula was also very useful for identifying the flowers exactly where I wanted them.
Use tip to pipe small leaves on the buttercream light. You can use this anywhere that you see a gap or rough junction you wish to conceal. Use tip to pipe tiny dots on the ends of visible green branches. These are our berries.
For extra texture, sprinkle a few moss cookie crumbs on top of the nest. If you are like me, you will realise that, in the end, you didn’t cover the messy junction where the grapevine wreath begins and ends. Cover it with an extra cherry blossom, and call it a day!