Mother’s Day Flower Cake

A very happy belated Mother’s Day to you! I hope it was full of joyful family moments, some gorgeous spring flowers, and maybe something sweet…

This past week, as I was recovering from being sick, I was daydreaming of buttercream. I’ve been wanting to practice my flower piping for some time now, and Mother’s Day seemed like such a nice occasion for doing just that.

So I whipped up a batch of vanilla buttercream, tinted and filled my bags, and got to work.

Normally I pipe flowers directly on the cake, but this time I decided to work with a flower nail and freeze them. I can never seem to tint the right amount of icing, so I have a ton leftover.

An excuse to make cupcakes, perhaps?

I baked up a yellow cake with some buttermilk and lemon zest.  Then I made a seedless blackberry jam to fill the cake.

I piped some buttercream around the edge to keep the jam from seeping out the sides.  I also frosted each layer very thinly before spreading on the jam in an effort to keep the cake from getting soggy.

Mmm… blackberry jam…

Frost, jam, layer, frost, jam, layer…

And where would we be without a little jam indulgence?

I iced the cake with a honey buttercream. I didn’t bother with careful smoothing this time. The cake is even visible on some of the sides, but I’m not a huge fan of excessive buttercream, so I prefer it this way.

I intended to practice roses and daffodils, but my buttercream was too thin for roses.  I ended up mostly with fantasy flowers.  They were every bit as fun.  Maybe more so.  🙂

While I liked making the flowers ahead of time for time constraints, I did have to be careful while transferring them to the cake. They soften in seconds.

I got an ice pack out and cooled my fingers in between flowers to keep them looking crisp.

I piped the leaves directly on the cake.

I love piping leaves.  Maybe even more than flowers.

A thoroughly enjoyable buttercream experience.

Now off to bake some cupcakes…

Happy Monday!

~Katie